LOCATION: Campobasso YEAR: 2007 CLIENT: Proma Ingegneria srl
The hotel, built in 1980, is located in a high seismicity area in the centre of Italy. The original structural design was based on seismic actions much lower than those nowadays expected for the area and according to the code prescritions in force at the time of construction. Therefore, it was design with no reference to capacity design principles.
Numeria acted as a consultant to the designer in charge of the refurbishmentt of the hotel. Numeria engineers carried out a detailed seismic vulnerability assessment of the building in its original configuration and proposed different retrofit design. Considering the building typology and the specific request of the owner to limit as much as possible business disruption, Numeria suggested the use of energy dissipation devices to be installed on the building's facades. The proposed intervention has been proven to be able to increase the seismic capacity of the building up to a value prescribed iby the current Italian code.
The retrofitting interventions design of buildings requires the assessment of the vulnerability of building in its original structural configuration and the design of intervention needed to reduce the building vulnerability up to a conventional level, normally indicated by the seismic standards
The seismic capacity of building in its original undamaged state was assessed by nonlinear static analyses assuming material parameters and load derived from on-site survey.
Nonlinear dynamic analyses were carried out in order to design the retrofit based on the use of energy dissipation devices. Buckling restrained braces (BRB) has been selected as optimal devices based on a detailed cost/benefit analyses carried out considering differnt types of energy dissipation devices.
Energy dissipation approach has been proven to be more effective and economically convenient than conventional strengthening.
