THE NATURAL LABORATORY OF ACUTO

Natural Laboratory of Acuto

 

Information on the service

The field laboratory of Acuto (AcutoFieldLab) is hosted in an inactive quarry called Cava Prenestina, which is located close to the Frosinone town. AcutoFieldLab was realised starting from 2015 by the Earth Science Department of Sapienza University (DST) and the CERI research centre in the framework of a project funded by the Italian Ministry of University (MUR) called “Progetto Dipartimenti di Eccellenza”. AcutoFieldLab focuses in the field of landslide risk management and aims to develop multi-parameters and multi-sensors monitoring systems in order to study predisposing and triggering factors of rockfalls.

 

Team

The AcutoFieldLab research team is composed of professors, researchers and PhD students from DST, CERI and NHAZCA start-up. The scientific manager of AcutoFieldLab activities is Prof. Salvatore Martino.

 

Monitoring devices:

  • Weather stations
  • strain-gages
  • extensometers
  • thermocouples
  • heat flux cell
  • leaf wetness sensors
  • Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) array
  • Triaxial geophones
  • Triaxial accelerometers
  • Acoustic emission sensors
  • Optical and Infrared cameras
  • Thermal cameras
  • Topographic monitoring with terrestrial laser scanner or total station
  • UAVs surveying
  • Dataloggers inside the shelter

 

Research activities

AcutoFieldLab activities focus on the comprehension of mechanical, thermo-mechanical and dynamical behaviour of rock masses under permanent and episodic natural and anthropogenic actions.

Studying the effects of these actions is fundamental to understanding predisposing and triggering factors of rapid mass movements, such as rockfalls and rock-block slides, which preparatory events are often difficult to detect and which may involve both natural and anthropogenic slopes.

From 2016, a 20m3 rock block likely predisposed to fall is monitored continuously by the means of strain gages, rock temperature measurements and a meteorological station in AcutoFieldLab (Fiorucci et al., 2020).

In order to understand the effect of thermal fluctuations through time, thermographic campaigns have been carried out by the means of a VNIR camera and 2D and 3D restitutions have been produced (Fiorucci et al., 2018; Grechi et al., 2021).

On this basis, the heat propagation caused by daily and seasonally thermal cycles has been modelled through numerical simulations by assuming a thermomechanical stress-strain configuration.

Furthermore, the joints’ mechanical responses have been estimated and the mechanical behaviour of joints related to different sets have been analysed with respect to thermal cycles of different time-length basing on their orientation and position from the free heated surface (Marmoni et al., 2020).

The rock’s behaviour in response to environmental forcing (e.g. human activity or intense weather events) has been monitored through mono and triaxial micro-accelerometers (D’Angiò et al., 2021).

This monitoring system has been recently extended thanks to the financial support provided in the framework of the Excellent Department Project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. This led to monitoring a larger portion of the slope. Furthermore in January 2022 the monitoring system has been enriched by the implementation of: one additional thermocouple, two heat flux cells, two leaf wetness sensors to check potential water circulation in the fracture network, two thermal probes within the thermal active layer featured by four thermocouples each, three additional extensometer to follow precursors of rock toppling, four strain gages for quantification of thermally induced strain on rock matrix and microfractures; one Fiber-Bragg Grating (FBG) array, composed by four different alignment of sensors devoted to thermal and strain monitoring; fourteen geophones (high and low frequency) for the definition dynamic behaviour and modal analysis of rock blocks and rock pillars; five Physical Acoustic, acoustic emission sensors (AE) for the continuous monitoring of the thermomechanical response of the rock to near surface temperature fluctuations.

Our research activities are currently focused on:

  1. the study of predisposing and triggering factors for rock slope instability
  2. detection of precursors through micro-seismic and micro-acoustic sensors
  3. 2D and 3D thermographic monitoring and modelling
  4. near sensing monitoring
  5. statistical analysis of rock deformation time series and forecasting modelling through machine learning approaches.

 

Didactis

AcutoFieldLab activities have been conducted also in the framework of PhD, Master and Bachelor thesis as well as during internships of students from abroad universities.

AcutoFieldLab activities have led to publishing several papers on national and international journals and to presenting numerous contributions to conferences.

Furthermore, AcutoFieldLab is part of didactic courses for high school students and its activities have been presented by different mass media.

 

Some photos from laboratory

Sensori
Devices: devices installed in the quarry instrumented sectors (from top to bottom clockwise): front view of the FBG sector; overall view of the rock tower sector; front view of the rock block sector with visible geophones and extensometers; lateral view of the rock block sector..
 
Infrastrutture
Infrastructure: monitoring infrastructure supporting the AcutoFieldLab (from left to right): watertight box containing dataloggers; shelter hosting network infrastructure; radio-link antenna for remote connection.
 
 
Sperimentazione
Experiments: experiments carried out at AcutoFieldLab (from top to bottom clockwise): active thermographic monitoring; photogrammetric and UAV survey; microaccelerometric and deformative monitoring; dynamic energization with vibrodine.
Didattica
Educational activities: educational activities and dissemination at AcutoFieldLab in the frame of Bachelor and master’s degree in engineering geology courses and during the International course on Geotechnical and Structural Monitoring (IcGSM).

 

 

 

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