A New Low-Cost Rolling Ball Type Isolation Device for the Protection of Museum Collections.

Recent seismic events highlighted the need to protect and preserve the cultural heritage for future generations. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the Italian guidelines for the safeguard of cultural heritage, indeed, stress the importance of protection policies from natural and human hazards. In particular, the preservation of artworks implies adopting measures to avoid any damage due to earthquakes. This research proposes a comprehensive approach for the mitigation of the seismic risk of art objects contained in confined environment. The study takes advantage of an interdisciplinary strategy for the evaluation of the seismic vulnerability of free-standing objects. According to this approach, a digital twin of the object is obtained by means of instrumentations such as Terrestrial Laser Scanner and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, subsequently employed as geometry reference for the reconstruction of a scaled wooden physical specimen; a shaking table experimental campaign is finally conducted on the specimen. In this study, the mentioned approach is integrated by proposing a low-cost rolling ball anti-seismic device to mitigate the response of small-scale objects through base seismic isolation. The proposed device is characterised by a limited footprint and is obtained by flat wooden panels conveniently carved for the realization of the spherical caps with a milling machine. The study was applied to the Venere Landolina, the masterpiece preserved in the “Paolo Orsi” regional archaeological museum in Syracuse (Italy). The results of a preliminary shaking table experimental campaign, also in view of the adopted manufacturing technique and materials, shows the effectiveness of the proposed low-cost device. A first design procedure of the device is introduced and some considerations on the dissipation of energy associated to the seismic isolating device are provided.