"Seismic analyis of complex masonry buildings"

The 6th of April 2009, a catastrophic earthquake of magnitude ML=5.8 (Mw=6.3), stroke down the city of L'Aquila. The seismic event caused serious injure to several masonry buildings, putting at imminent risk a valuable historical and architectural heritage. Partial collapses or severe damages affected several constructions in the city centre, which consist primarily of masonry-type buildings. The present paper approaches the multi-faceted task of evaluating the seismic performance of a complex masonry building located in the centre of the city, hosting an important bank institution. The building possesses many peculiarities characterizing its dynamical behaviour, such as a C-shaped non-regular plan, a vertically-varying geometry, and a complex resistant scheme, coming out from an important partial demolition and rebuilding intervention, dating to the early 70’s. The current structure is realized by a reinforced concrete frame, superimposed to the original masonry wall scheme, at the second floor level. The paper includes a comprehensive discussion on the current limit capacity of the building, based on the observations from repeated visual inspections of the earthquake occurred damage, the experimental data from a wide campaign of in-situ tests on the material properties, the results of numerical simulations from different finite element models of the damaged and undamaged structure