Development and Dissemination of Procedures for Designing Innovative Seismic Strengthening Methods “Constrain” and Pilot Application on Existing Brick Buildings

Description:

In “CONSTRAIN” project, intervention strategies have been developed for the reduction of the seismic vulnerability of existing masonry buildings and their effectiveness has been verified through a significant experimental campaign. Basically, the proposed strategies make it possible to obtain significant reductions in seismic vulnerability with interventions carried out from outside the buildings, without requiring to transfer people and activities temporarily in other buildings, with significant savings in economic terms but mainly in terms of unease for people. In the current project we intend to develop the necessary tools for a correct design and application of these strategies, as well as the application on pilot buildings for which interventions for the improvement of structural performance are planned in the near future. In particular, accurate analytical and numerical algorithms will be developed, to be calibrated on the basis of the experimental results of “CONSTRAIN”, to extend the cases studied experimentally and allow designers to be provided with the tools for the executive design of the proposed systems with the use of automatic calculation that they currently use. The design procedure will be applied to some pilot residential buildings of 1950s and historic buildings subject to facade protection, in order to make a valid operational guide available to the designers. In the first type of buildings, the execution of the interventions from the outside is envisaged, to avoid transferring the occupants and the activities of the buildings during the execution of the works; in the second type of building, on the other hand, the execution of the decorated facades only on the internal side is envisaged, to preserve the cultural and typological characteristics of the buildings themselves. Wide dissemination of the results will also be ensured through seminars and technical communications.

Main goals:

The project aims to develop calculation tools for the design of reinforcement strategies proposed in the “CONSTRAIN” project, to be calibrated based on the experimental results of that project and specific analytical and numerical modeling in order to extend the validity of the experimental results. Subsequently, the sizing procedures are applied to selected pilot buildings for the actual implementation of the reinforcement strategies.

Project work packages:

DS 1 – Development and calibration of analytical and numerical algorithms
DS 2 – Design guidelines for strengthening CONSTRAIN
DS 3 – Application of the methodology on pilot buildings