Last November 2019, a set of 6 crackmeters have been installed in the Royal Monastery of Santes Creus, a former Cistercian monastery. The abbey came into being in 1160 A.D, in today’s municipality of Aiguamurcia, in the village of Santes Creus, in the province of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain).

This crackmeters have been developed under the request of the Architectonic Heritage Service from the General Management of Cultural Heritage of the Cultural Department from the Government of Catalonia. The aim of this project is to monitor not just the movement of the chosen crack’s, but also the environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, which have an impact on the crack’s behaviour.

The monitorization of these parameters will provide the staff of the Architectonic Heritage Service with data that will allow them to prevent any unexpected deterioration of the building, by having an updated situation of the most damaged or affected localizations of the structure due to the degradation caused by time, bringing the chance to start a restoration process in the analysed zones on the requested time.

The development of this devices has been carried out by a recent member of the MECAMAT group, Antoni Suriñach, a key collaborator of the group, Jordi Serra, and an engineering student intern, Jaime Aparicio. During the development, they have tested different tools to obtain the best results at the lowest cost. The resulted device is capable of measuring crack movements with a resolution of ±0,625µm and an accuracy of ±1,5µm by using a potentiometer sensor, a voltage reference source, an operational amplifier and a A/D converter. Each crackmeter is suitable to mount up to 4 potentiometers simultaneously, adding another operational amplifier and an A/D converter. The humidity sensor has an accuracy of ±3,6%RH, and the temperature sensor has an accuracy of ±0,5°C. Thanks to its modular design, it has the capacity to support upgrading changes, adapting the device to the requests of the environment where it’s needed.