SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF MASONRY BUILDING AGGREGATES IN HISTORICAL CENTERS: TWO CASE STUDIES

Abstract eng:
The reuse of the building heritage of historical centers requires to solve in a reliable manner the problem of seismic analysis of the residential units belonging to a building cluster. This implies complex interactions at the structural level, which influence the seismic response and damage mechanisms of the individual units. Even if a rigorous approach would require the analysis of the entire aggregate, in the professional practice, the safety assessment is typically performed on the single unit [1]. At the regional scale, empirical methodologies aimed at taking into account the variation of the vulnerability according to the position of the unit within the aggregate and some geometrical features were developed. In the case studies here presented, a computational modelling in the non-linear dynamic field is performed, which allows to calibrate the fragility curves for the building aggregate. The case studies are two large building clusters located in Puglia (in the historical center of Foggia and in Sant'Agata di Puglia, respectively). Preliminary FEM simulations under seismic actions have provided information about the overall response in terms of vibration and deformation modes, allowing to select the most significant ones. Then, it was possible to define a simplified plane model, able to represent the response in the transversal direction, which revealed to be the predominant one. Moreover, some partial models with a simplified geometry have been defined for limited architectural parts that are particularly representative with regard to the development of mechanisms of damage and collapse [2]. These models, consisting of an assembly of quadrilateral elements, are formulated in accordance with a rigid body and spring model RBSM [3]. The non linear dynamic analyses performed for the two case studies have shown that the vulnerability is very different from the one predicted by classical vulnerability methods, highlighting that in the case of complex cluster, a detailed and specific tool is required.

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