Issue 46

A. Maione et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 46 (2018) 240-251; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.46.22 246 On the other hand, also the vault covering the room 47 has probably a timber structure, as suggested by the thermographic image of the similar room 48 in Fig. 6b. It is very likely, therefore, that the timber structures were created after the partition of the unique space covered by the original vault. Instead, as far as the painted vaults of the rooms 9 and 10 are concerned, their thermographic images do not reveal the signs of the timber skeleton and this may led to suppose the presence of masonry vaults. This result, however, seems to be not consistent with the presence of a non-structural wall on one side, as previously highlighted. Thus, a plausible explanation of this configuration was derived from a further typology of vault (Fig. 7) that was possible to see from a crawl space of the Farnesian staircase. It is a no-load-bearing masonry vault, characterized by a thin thickness of bricks disposed on a sheet (20 cm average thickness). This typology could be compatible with the underneath thin wall and maybe it was related to the need of preserving the paintings on their intrados surface. (a) (b) Figure 6: Room 48: (a) view and (b) thermographic image of the intrados of the vault. (a) (b) Figure 7: (a) Planimetric identification of the Farnesian staircase and (b) no-load-bearing masonry vault visible from the staircase. TYPOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE HORIZONTAL STRUCTURES he management of the instrumental findings together with the information derived from the visual inspections and the analysis of the documentary sources allowed achieving a complete characterization of the horizontal structures upon the first level of the Capodimonte Museum. In particular, the application of the infrared thermography led to a first distinction between structural masonry vaults and no-load-bearing vaults. The first ones must withstand their self weight, the non-permanent structural loading and the variable loading; the no-load-bearing vaults, instead, must withstand only their self-weight, while the other loadings are transferred to distinct and separated horizontal structures. However, it should be highlighted that the infrared thermography only provided images related to the intrados surface of the vaults and hence it is not adequate to describe the separated load-bearing horizontal structures. T