Feasibility of a Thermography Nondestructive Technique for Determining the Quality of Historical Frescoed Masonries: Applications on the Templar Church of San Bevignate

Thermography is a non-destructive and non-contact technique allowing, without taking samples, gaining information about several aspects of heritage buildings. This contribution presents the last phase of a research path, started with laboratory tests and now aimed at a real case of great cultural value, which involved the use of the thermal imaging camera to unveil in-depth defects and the wall texture, hidden by valuable plasters or frescoes, in order to correlate the quality of the masonry to its mechanical properties. For this, a method has been devised, made of an original integration of thermographic and post-processing techniques, and recently was applied for the first time to a real case study: the Italian Templar church of San Bevignate, part of an architectural complex from the 13th century located in the city of Perugia. The opportunity to establish the masonry quality of a historical building using non-destructive testing (NDT) represents a little-known possibility to frame not only important factors for the conservation of the frescoes but also information on the seismic vulnerability of historical masonry architectures in order to preserve the artefact from being damaged during the surveys and to plan any effective intervention of restoration and structural reinforcement.