Showing papers by "Elena Mele published in 2013"

Multi-storey masonry buildings: evaluation of effectiveness of mechanical strengthening

Abstract: Nowadays, the evaluation of seismic safety of historical buildings and the retrofi tting design still deserve attention from the international scientifi c community, due to wide heritage of existing masonry buildings. In fact, the historical buildings were constructed according to ancient rules of art, without performing any explicit structural analysis. Furthermore, modeling and analyzing of masonry structures are complex tasks, due to the anisotropic and non-homogeneous material properties, as well as frequent modifi cations of the static scheme, occurring over the centuries as a consequence of elevations, openings of in the bearing walls, etc. In this regard, the Italian technical code [1] explicitly requires the evaluation of the structural safety, that has to be included in the structural report with the safety level achieved through the retrofi tting and/or the possible limitations to be impose for the building use. For these assessments, the Italian technical codes [1] and [2] recommends of using linear or not linear kinematic analysis, and/or pushover analysis. In the light of the previous observations, in this paper both kinematic and pushover analyses are used for evaluating the horizontal capacity and the tie-rods effectiveness in multi-storey masonry building.