Abstract
The experience of the recent earthquakes in Italy caused a shocking impact in terms of loss of human life and damage in buildings. In particular, when it comes to ancient constructions, their cultural and historical value overlaps with the economic and social one. Among the historical structures, churches have been the object of several studies which identified the main characteristics of the seismic response and the most probable collapse mechanisms. More rarely, academic studies have been devoted to ancient palaces, since they often exhibit irregular and complicated arrangement of the resisting elements, which makes their response very difficult to predict. In this paper, a palace located in L’Aquila, severely damaged by the seismic event of 2009 is the object of an accurate study. A historical reconstruction of the past strengthening interventions as well as a detailed geometric relief is performed to implement detailed numerical models of the structure. Both global and local models are considered and static nonlinear analyses are performed considering the influence of the input direction on the seismic vulnerability of the building. The damage pattern predicted by the numerical models is compared with that observed after the earthquake. The seismic vulnerability assessments are performed in terms of ultimate peak ground acceleration (PGA) using capacity curves and the Italian code spectrum. The results are compared in terms of ultimate ductility demand evaluated performing nonlinear dynamic analyses considering the actual registered seismic input of L’Aquila earthquake.
Highlights
In the last ten years, three destructive earthquakes struck Italy causing severe damage to the cultural heritage of the country
The mentioned seismic events gave a strong impulse towards the understanding and the interpretation of the seismic response of structures with reference to different structural typologies [1,2,3], Buildings 2017, 7, 106; doi:10.3390/buildings7040106
More rarely, studies were devoted to historical palaces [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], which are characterized by a wider spectrum of different typologies and peculiarities, and the large part of these studies is based on the observation on the field of the effects of the earthquakes without a complete numerical counterpart
Summary
In the last ten years, three destructive earthquakes struck Italy causing severe damage to the cultural heritage of the country. The adoption of a numerical simplified model proposed for unreinforced masonry structures (URM) [19] and in-filled frame structures (IFS) [20,21,22], which was implemented in a dedicated software environment allowed implementing a global numerical model of the building on which nonlinear static analyses were performed considering the influence of the direction of the input Such an approach was compared in the literature with other numerical strategies on definite structural typologies, such as URM buildings [23] and slender towers [24], showing its reliability with reference to different buildings typologies and it appeared suitable in the case of ancient masonry palaces. The proposed case study is a significant example of interpretation of the seismic response of ancient palaces, but the combined use of global simplified and local refined models may represent a more general methodological approach to be pursued in similar circumstances
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