"Seismic retrofitting of the recently-built edifices of the Engineering Faculty of L’Aquila"

The catastrophic earthquake which struck the city of L'Aquila at the beginning of April 2009 caused severe damages to many buildings owned by the University of L’Aquila. Several structural components need important interventions to restore the operational level. The limited availability of financial resources induces to carefully balance economic and safety requirements. Moreover, sustainable retrofitting and rehabilitation of the structural performance should maximize the effects of slightly invasive interventions. In this framework, the seismic retrofitting of the recently-built edifices of the Engineering Faculty constitutes a challenging case study. Therefore, an integrated working process is running including the following steps: material characterization through destructive and non-destructive tests, exhaustive structural and geotechnical survey to clearly assess the damage conditions and site properties; dynamic testing, modal identification, finite element model updating and seismic analyses to understand the overall structural dynamic behaviour. Within the level of knowledge of the system, the optimal design of retrofitting interventions on structural and non-structural components has been pursued based on energy dissipation concepts and new technologies. The process has been supported by the free of charge cooperation of the academic staff and the resources of the university laboratories; the action has been supported by a voluntary non-profit organization which encourages high ethical standards.