Seismic vulnerability assessment of masonry buildings in a region of moderate seismicity

Abstract

To assess the seismic vulnerability of masonry buildings is largely matter of personal feeling and experience especially when dealing with old houses made of heterogeneous materials and without a plan. One way to predict their resistance to earthquake forces is the experience on models put on a shaking table. Costs and scaling problems, particularly severe for stone walls, are limiting factors in the extensive use of this technique. After the Friuli 1976 earthquake, the regional government arranged a detailed survey of damages suffered by buildings to be repaired. These data organised in the FRED (Friuli Earthquake Database) make it possible to compare, on a statistically significant basis, the a priori vulnerability with the effective damage. One further step towards the practical use of the results is given by characterising the relevant features of the buildings with the same parameters which can be found in the General Census periodically produced by the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT).

Strategies for Structural and Energy Improvement in Mid-Rise Unreinforced Masonry Apartment Buildings. A Case Study in Mestre (Northeast Italy)

“…Both in-depth analyses and large-scale vulnerability assessment campaigns are often carried out on 'ancient', i.e., built earlier than 1919, individual buildings or building stocks [8][9][10]. The tools for seismic assessment depend on whether a building's seismic behaviour is governed by either out-of-plane local mechanisms or overall shear behaviour of masonry walls [11][12][13]. The 20th century URM buildings are planned to have this latter behaviour, but it has only been in recent times that specific studies considered their actual seismic damage [14,15] or addressed the seismic assessment of the oldest examples (pre-1960) [16,17].…”

“…These conditions were a proxy of the uncomfortable indoor climate in CSG's flats. Indeed, thermal finite element analyses with IRIS software package [69] confirmed low temperatures on internal surfaces (10)(11)(12)(13)(14) • C close to the dew temperature, especially in the junctions between floor slabs and walls and between the roof and the walls. Due to the high internal RH, the software confirmed the possible presence of mould on cold surfaces (Figure 13).…”

Energy-based modelling of in-plane fragility curves for the 2D ultimate capacity of Italian masonry buildings

“…Finally, it is possible to derive the correlation among collected typological characteristics, reached levels of damage and associated hazard. In the Literature, several observation-based approaches have been proposed in the context of the development of seismic fragility curves (the reader is referred to (Benedetti et al, 1988;Riuscetti et al, 1997;Rossetto et al, 2013;Zuccaro et al, 2021) and references therein).…”