Experimental Calculation of the Damping Ratio In Buildings Hosting Permanent GPS Stations During the Recent Italian Earthquakes

Abstract

During the recent earthquakes in Italy, the contemporary presence of about 40 permanent GPS and 40 accelerometric stations of the national seismic network made it possible to estimate the value of the damping ratio of the buildings hosting the GPS stations. This value was calculated as the minimum of a function (parabola) constructed step by step from the relations between the ordinates of the pseudo-acceleration spectra extracted from the GPS and accelerometric measurements. For both construction material and building geometry, the results indicate values that differ by at least two percentage points from the values imposed by the technical regulations.

Relation between dynamic amplification, structural height and damage in buildings affected by the recent Italian earthquakes

“…The limits of the present study are: the difficulty in distinguishing the vulnerability due to construction materials and characteristics from that associated with resonance, especially in the L'Aquila and Central Italy areas characterized by low-quality materials; a non-rigorous dependence of T on H and the value of f, as demonstrated in recent works by the present author (Gatti 2018b(Gatti , 2018c.…”