The facility has been realised in the ’20s and the vertical walls delimiting the quays are made of heavy concrete blocks; more recently, a further section has been added to the pier to increase berthing space and the pier measures 400 meters in length. Planned developments consist of dredging of the east basin from the actual 11 m to a water depth of 14 m, to allow berthing of bigger ships and have required the strengthening of the east wall
Aim of monitoring:
The quay wall has been equipped with 72 Smartec SOFO sensors (67 of them continuously functioning), installed in such a way as to have 3 sensors for each measuring section. All sensors have an active length of 10 meters; sensors have been positioned at the 3 vertices of the service gallery located in the crown blocks, except in the last extension part, where no gallery was built: therefore in the last 5 sections only a pair of sensors have been installed in the upper surface of the crown block, underneath the pavement. The cabling of sensors has been organised in three groups (A, B, and C, starting from the seaside), each one controlled by a junction box collecting 24 optical cables. The junction boxes are in turn connected to the reading unit using cables located in an underground duct. The SOFO reading unit is connected to the sensors through a programmable optical switch. Data are collected and stored in a computer database (SOFODB). In the next future, the reading unit will be connected to the Port of Genoa Information Network and the database will be made available online.
Main results:
A first analysis and interpretation of the data collected from the long-term monitoring system of the San Giorgio pier have shown that the structural behaviour can be characterised in terms of its response to environmental temperature variations.
| INSTALLATION PERIOD | TYPE OF SENSORS | NUMBER OF SENSORS |
| 2000 | SOFO | 74 |
