Understanding and predicting the durability of timber structural components of buildings can lead to a more reliable and efficient use of this material in constructions. The work described herein presents a methodology to assess the life-expectancy of wall-foundation details in timber buildings based on the estimation of the durability of the timber structural element. Risk classes were defined starting from the inputs from the most relevant standards addressing the durability of timber available in Europe. The attribution of a risk class to the wall-foundation detail requires decision trees that consider the key aspects that affect the durability of this construction detail in the case of fungal attack. The methodology was then applied to three case studies and the results were compared to the observations from onsite inspections carried out on the decayed structural timber elements. The present work represents the first step towards the development of a tool capable of predicting the durability of timber components within the building structure. The work reported herein was carried out within the framework of the TSafe project.
Italy is located in a very active seismic zone, and many earthquakes have marked the country, some of them in the recent past. In order to take adequate measures of seismic prevention and protection, in the last decades, the Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC) initiated a survey and introduced a specific form for the quick and/or post-seismic assessment of buildings. This is useful to obtain statistics on the types of structures and their vulnerability and a judgement on the damage, leading to a decision about the possibility of reuse and/or the level of retrofitting to be applied. Those activities have been developed since the beginning of 2000. This task is currently carried out by the Italian DPC-ReLUIS project research, line WP2 on the inventory of building structures, setting up the CARTIS form for any structural type, like masonry, reinforced concrete, precast concrete, steel, and timber structures, the latter being mainly related to large span buildings, extensively used in Italy. In this context, the paper presents the first draft of the CARTIS form for large span timber structures that provides a general description for typical structural schemes, through the singular points commonly considered as seismic structural vulnerabilities. Moreover, the statistics on timber large span structures based on a sample of 10 buildings is presented.
Long-span structures, such as school gyms and sports centres, are often used by the Italian Department of Civil Protection (DPC) as post-catastrophe shelters or headquarters. The Emilia 2012 earthquake drew the attention of the DPC to this type of structure due to the damage that many of these buildings suffered. In this paper, a dataset of 101 timber structures was analysed based on a simplified methodology that detects the major vulnerabilities in long-span timber roofs to help planning further investigations and retrofit interventions. The methodology analyses the elements most vulnerable to the seismic action quantitatively and qualitatively, with fast and straightforward approaches. The quantitative evaluation of the vulnerabilities was achieved by applying the Italian Building Code. The aspects not considered in the quantitative evaluation were instead assessed through qualitative parameters inspired by damage identification forms, such as the AeDES form. The structures analysed are located near the epicentres of the last strong earthquakes that struck Italian territory: Abruzzo 2009, Emilia 2012, and central Italy 2016. Damage and retrofits, identified by interviewing owners, designers, and builders, showed a good correlation between the real behaviour shown by the surveyed structures and the vulnerabilities detected by the simplified methodology.
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