On 2 April 2025, Antoine Gros, co-supervised by ENSAL, defended his thesis entitled ‘Towards a collaborative digital environment for multimodal analysis of structural behaviour’, (doctoral school 432 Sciences et métiers de l’ingénieur – SMI).
Summary of the thesis:
Assessing the stability of a built structure and gaining a good understanding of its structural behaviour are crucial to building its resilience. Among them, heritage structures are unique cases, presenting structural diagnostic challenges whose complexity is only matched by the diversity of techniques implemented throughout their life cycle. However, the interdisciplinary effort between the disciplines of Cultural Heritage and Architecture, Engineering and Construction required to create the appropriate body of knowledge is hampered by the heterogeneity of the information produced. The result is that diagnostic processes are linear and disjointed, rather than cyclical and connected. This study proposes to connect structural diagnosis information and processes via a knowledge graph, based on the Semantic Web technology stack. Its construction is based on a dual methodological approach: the reuse of the CIDOC CRM ontology using ontological motifs, and the definition of a system and its architecture to perpetuate and manipulate this information. The focus of the study is on combining information from visual inspection, in particular alterations to the masonry, and the results of mechanical simulation using the Discrete Element Method, in order to inform decision-making in the diagnostic phase and for the design of restoration strategies. This approach is being applied to the structural diagnosis of the counter-balance system of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and demonstrated by means of a proof of concept.
Thesis co-supervision :
Livio De Luca, Research Director, UPR 2002 MAP, CNRS
Frédéric Dubois, Research Engineer, UMR 5508 LMGC, CNRS, University of Montpellier
Philippe Veron, Professor, EA 7515 LISPEN, Arts & Métiers, France
Composition of the jury :
Béatrice Markhoff, Senior Lecturer HDR, UMR 7324 CITERES, CNRS, University of Tours
Pierre Hallot, Professor, Faculty of Architecture, University of Liège
Gilles Gesquiere, Professor, UMR 5205 LIRIS, University of Lyon 2
Stéphane Morel, Professor, I2M, University of Bordeaux
Livio De Luca, Research Director, UPR 2002 MAP, CNRS
Frédéric Dubois, Research Engineer, UMR 5508 LMGC, CNRS, University of Montpellier
Philippe Veron, Professor, EA 7515 LISPEN, Arts et Métiers
Kévin Jacquot, Senior Lecturer, URM MAP, Ministry of Culture, ENSA Lyon