Laboratory Details

Acuto Field Laboratory

The field laboratory named AcutoFieldLab is located inside the Cava Prenestina, Acuto (FR), and it aims at studying the role of environmental factors, such as temperatures and meteorological conditions, in preparing rock blocks toward unstable conditions and eventually failure. Furthermore, the laboratory also focuses on the study of triggering factors of rock block instabilities, such as rainfalls, strong winds and earthquakes. The laboratory consists of a multisensor and multiparametric monitoring system installed on three sectors of the quarry rock wall that are dedicated to: 1) study of the interactions between preparatory and triggering factors of instability at a small rock block scale (few meters); 2) study of the interactions between environmental stress and the stress-strain response of a stable sector of the rock mass; 3) study of the interactions between preparatory and triggering factors of instability at a medium rock block scale (tens of meters) . The monitoring system continuously record multiparametric timeseries and the data is transmitted to a remote Cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) server of the Earth Sciences Department of Sapienza University of Rome to allow researchers for their remote analysis and management.