Twin lintel belt in steel for seismic strengthening of brick masonry buildings

A single-room,single-storey full-scale brick masonry building with precast RC roofing system was tested thrice under displacement controlled lateral cyclic loading,to assess the effectiveness of the basic repair and seismic strengthening techniques.Initially,the virgin building specimen was loaded laterally to f^tilure.In the second stage,the damaged building was repaired by stitching across the cracks,and tested under the same lateral loading.In the third stage,the twice-damaged structure was repaired once more by stitching and strengthened by twin lintel belt in steel and vertical comer reinforcement, and re-tested.The building strengthened by twin lintel belt in steel showed about 28% higher strength under lateral loading than the virgin building.

Analysis of the impact of large scale seismic retrofitting strategies through the application of a vulnerability-based approach on traditional masonry buildings

The buildings＇ capacity to maintain minimum structural safety levels during natural disasters, such as earthquakes, is recognisably one of the aspects that most influence urban resilience. Moreover, the public investment in risk mitigation strategies is fimdamental, not only to promote social and urban and resilience, but also to limit consequent material, human and environmental losses. Despite the growing awareness of this issue, there is still a vast number of traditional masonry buildings spread throughout many European old city centres that lacks of adequate seismic resistance, requiring therefore urgent retrofitting interventions in order to both reduce their seismic vulnerability and to cope with the increased seismic requirements of recent code standards. Thus, this paper aims at contributing to mitigate the social and economic impacts of earthquake damage scenarios through the development of vulnerability-based comparative analysis of some of the most popularretrofitting techniques applied after the 1998 Azores earthquake. The influence of each technique individually and globally studied resorting to a seismic vulnerability index methodology integrated into a GIS tool and damage and loss scenarios are constructed and critically discussed. Finally, the economic balance resulting from the implementation of that techniques are also examined.

Simplified seismic scenario analysis of existing masonry buildings accounting for local site effects

This study discusses the effects of local sites and hazard amplification on the seismic vulnerability assessment of existing masonry buildings.In this context,a rapid seismic evaluation procedure was implemented on an old masonry building stock in the historical center Galata,located inİstanbul,to determine the seismic risk priority of the built heritage.Damage scenarios were generated for all soil classes,different moment magnitudes,and source-to-site distances to obtain more accurate results for the seismic vulnerability assessment of the studied building stock.Consequently,damage distributions estimated under nine different scenarios with/without site effects were compared and illustrated in maps to discuss changes in vulnerability owing to amplification effects.In this study,by re-examining the rapid seismic evaluation procedure by including geo-hazard-based assessment,the importance of site effects on the vulnerability and risk assessment of built heritage was underlined.The proposed framework integrating field data and local site effects is believed to advance the current applications for vulnerability assessment of masonry buildings and provide an improvement in the application of rapid seismic assessment procedures with more reliable results.

Pseudo-dynamic tests on masonry residential buildings seismically retrofitted by precast steel reinforced concrete walls

A retrofitting technology using precast steel reinforced concrete（PSRC） panels is developed to improve the seismic performance of old masonry buildings. The PSRC panels are built up as an external PSRC wall system surrounding the existing masonry building. The PSRC walls are well connected to the existing masonry building, which provides enough confinement to effectively improve the ductility, strength, and stiffenss of old masonry structures. The PSRC panels are prefabricated in a factory, significantly reducing the situ work and associated construction time. To demonstrate the feasibility and mechanical effectivenss of the proposed retrofitting system, a full-scale five-story specimen was constructed. The retrofitting process was completed within five weeks with very limited indoor operation. The specimen was then tested in the lateral direction, which could potentially suffer sigifnicant damage in a large earthquake. The technical feasibility, construction workability, and seismic performance were thoroughly demonstrated by a full-scale specimen construction and pseudo-dynamic tests.

Seismic design analysis of the country masonry school buildings in the meizoseismal area

Several reinforcing schemes are illustrated that are based on the loading characteristics of typical country masonry school buildings with sparsely spaced transversal walls and large depth. From the seismic damage observed following the Wenchuan Earthquake, the effects of reinforcing schemes, tie-columns and tie-beams on the seismic resistance of masonry buildings are analyzed. The concept of improving the ductility of these types of buildings is presented. Finally, some suggestions are proposed for the design of masonry buildings with sparsely spaced transversal walls and large depth.

Introspection on improper seismic retrofit of Basilica Santa Maria di Collemaggio after 2009 Italian earthquake

The 2009 L’Aquila, Italy earthquake highlighted the seismic vulnerability of historic masonry building structures due to improper ＂strengthening＂ retrofit work that has been done in the last 50 years. Italian seismic standards recommend the use of traditional reinforcement techniques such as replacing the original wooden roof structure with new reinforced concrete （RC） or steel elements, inserting RC tie-beams in the masonry and new RC floors, and using RC jacketing on the shear walls. The L’Aquila earthquake revealed the numerous limitations of these interventions, because they led to increased seismic forces （due to greater additional weight） and to deformation incompatibilities of the incorporated elements with the existing masonry walls. This paper provides a discussion of technical issues pertaining to the seismic retrofit of the Santa Maria di Collemaggio Basilica and in particular, the limitations of the last （2000） retrofit intervention. Considerable damage was caused to the church because of questionable actions and incorrect and improper technical choices.

The use of Artificial Neural Networks to estimate seismic damage and derive vulnerability functions for traditional masonry

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the adoption of Artificial Intelligence-based techniques to estimate seismic damage,not with the goal of replacing existing approaches,but as a mean to improve the precision of empirical methods.For such,damage data collected in the aftermath of the 1998 Azores earthquake(Portugal)is used to develop a comparative analysis between damage grades obtained resorting to a classic damage formulation and an innovative approach based on Artificial Neural Networks(ANNs).The analysis is carried out on the basis of a vulnerability index computed with a hybrid seismic vulnerability asssment methodology,which is subsequently used as input to both approaches.The results obtained are then compared with real post-earthquake damage observation and critically discussed taking into account the level of adjustment achieved by each approach.Finally,a computer routine that uses the ANN as an approximation function is developed and applied to derive a new vulnerability curve expression.In general terms,the ANN developed in this study allowed to obtain much better approximations than those achieved with the original vulnerability approach,which has revealed to be quite non-conservative.Similarly,the proposed vulnerability curve expression was found to provide a more accurate damage prediction than the traditional analytical expressions.