Seismically isolated buildings in Italy: State-of-the-art review and applications

Abstract

This paper presents a state-of-the-art on seismic isolation in Italy and the most important applications. After a brief introduction on the basic concepts of seismic isolation, applications to new strategic and public buildings are shown, as well as to new residential buildings, pointing out the very good behavior shown by the seismically isolated structures during real seismic events. Then, attention is focused on the retrofit of existing buildings, which represents the real challenge for the future. The most interesting applications on existing reinforced concrete, masonry and historic structures are shown, pointing out the specific challenges for each case. Finally, recordings obtained during the seismic sequence that struck Central Italy since August 24th, 2016, are presented and discussed. These are useful in analyzing the behavior of base isolation systems and their effectiveness under low energy earthquakes.