Seismic Testing of Adjacent Interacting Masonry Structures

Abstract

In many historical centres in Europe, stone masonry buildings are part of building aggregates, which developed when the layout of the city or village was densified. In these aggregates, adjacent buildings share structural walls to support floors and roofs. Meanwhile, the masonry walls of the façades of adjacent buildings are often connected by dry joints since adjacent buildings were constructed at different times. Observations after for example the recent Central Italy earthquakes showed that the dry joints between the building units were often the first elements to be damaged. As a result, the joints opened up leading to pounding between the building units and a complicated interaction at floor and roof beam supports. The analysis of such building aggregates is very challenging and modelling guidelines do not exist. Advances in the development of analysis methods have been impeded by the lack of experimental data on the seismic response of such aggregates. The objective of the project AIMS (Seismic Testing of Adjacent Interacting Masonry Structures), included in the H2020 project SERA, is to provide such experimental data by testing an aggregate of two buildings under two horizontal components of dynamic excitation. The test unit is built at half-scale, with a two-storey building and a one-storey building. The buildings share one common wall while the façade walls are connected by dry joints. The floors are at different heights leading to a complex dynamic response of this smallest possible building aggregate. The shake table test is conducted at the LNEC seismic testing facility. The testing sequence comprises four levels of shaking: 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of nominal shaking table capacity. Extensive instrumentation, including accelerometers, displacement transducers and optical measurement systems, provides detailed information on the building aggregate response. Special attention is paid to the interface opening, the global behaviour in relation to the interface separation, interstorey drifts and out-of-plane displacements.

Full document

References

[1] Guerrini, G., Senaldi, I., Scherini, S., Morganti, S. and Magenes, G. “Material Characterization for the Shaking-Table Test of the Scaled Prototype of a Stone Masonry Building Aggregate,” presented at the XVII Convegno ANIDIS “l’Ingegneria Sismica in Italia,” Pistoia, Italy, (2017).

[2] Senaldi, I., Guerrini, G., Caruso, M., Graziotti, F., Magenes, G., Beyer, K. and Penna, A. “Experimental Seismic Response of a Half-Scale Stone Masonry Building Aggregate: Effects of Retrofit Strategies,” in Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, (2019), pp. 1372–1381.

[3] Guerrini, G., Senaldi, I., Graziotti, F., Magenes, G., Beyer, K. and Penna, A. “Shake-Table Test of a Strengthened Stone Masonry Building Aggregate with Flexible Diaphragms,” Int. J. Archit. Herit., pp. 1–20, (2019), doi: 10.1080/15583058.2019.1635661.

[4] Lagomarsino, S., Penna, A., Galasco, A and Cattari, S. “TREMURI program: An equivalent frame model for the nonlinear seismic analysis of masonry buildings,” Eng. Struct., vol. 56, pp. 1787–1799, (2013), doi: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2013.08.002.

[5] Senaldi, I., Magenes, G. and Penna, A. “Numerical Investigations on the Seismic Response of Masonry Building Aggregates,” Adv. Mater. Res., vol. 133–134, pp. 715–720, (2010), doi: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.133-134.715.

[6] Senaldi, I., Guerrini, G., Solenghi, M., Graziotti, F., Penna, A. and Beyer, K. “Numerical modelling of the seismic response of a half-scale stone masonry aggregate prototype”, XVIII Convengno Anidis, (2019).

[7] Formisano, A., Castaldo, C. and Mazzolani, F.M. “Non-Linear Analysis of Masonry Building Compounds: A Comparison of Numerical and Theoretical Results,” presented at the The Fourteenth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy, p. 66, doi: 10.4203/ccp.102.66, (2013).

[8] Formisano, A., Florio, G., Landolfo, R. and Mazzolani, F.M. “Numerical calibration of an easy method for seismic behaviour assessment on large scale of masonry building aggregates,” Adv. Eng. Softw., vol. 80, pp. 116–138, (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.advengsoft.2014.09.013.

[9] Maio, R., Vicente, R., Formisano, A. and Varum, H. “Seismic vulnerability of building aggregates through hybrid and indirect assessment techniques,” Bull. Earthq. Eng., vol. 13, no. 10, pp. 2995–3014, (2015), doi: 10.1007/s10518-015-9747-9.

[10] Formisano, A. “Theoretical and Numerical Seismic Analysis of Masonry Building Aggregates: Case Studies in San Pio Delle Camere (L’Aquila, Italy),” J. Earthq. Eng., vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 227–245, (2017), doi: 10.1080/13632469.2016.1172376.

[11] Formisano, A. and Massimilla,A. “A Novel Procedure for Simplified Nonlinear Numerical Modeling of Structural Units in Masonry Aggregates,” Int. J. Archit. Herit., vol. 12, no. 7–8, pp. 1162–1170, (2018), doi: 10.2080/15583058.2018.1503365.

[12] McKenna, F., Fenves, G.L., Scott, M.H. and Jeremic, B. Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OpenSees), (2000).

[13] Vanin, F., Penna, A. and Beyer, K. "A three-dimensional macro-element for modelling of the in plane and out-of-plane response of masonry walls", Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, submitted for publication, (2020).

[14] Luzzi, L., Puglia, R. and Russo, E. Engineering Strong Motion Database, version 1.0. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Observatories & Research Facilities for European Seismology. doi: 10.13127/ESM. Orfeus WG5, (2016).