Adriseismic Methodology for Expeditious Seismic Assessment of Unreinforced Masonry Buildings

Abstract

The paper describes a novel Adriseismic method for expeditious assessment of seismic risk associated with unreinforced masonry buildings. The methodology was developed for the Adriseismic project of the Interreg ADRION programme, with the aim to develop and share tools for increasing cooperation and reducing seismic risk for six participating countries within the region surrounding the Adriatic and the Ionian Seas. The method is applicable to unreinforced masonry buildings characterised by three main seismic failure mechanisms, namely masonry disintegration, out-of-plane failure, and in-plane damage/failure. Depending on the input parameters for a specific structure, the assessment yields a qualitative output that consists of the masonry quality index, the index of structural response, the level of seismic risk, and the most probable collapse mechanism. Both input and output of the method are applied in the spreadsheet form. The method has so far been applied in urban areas of participating countries in the project, including Mirandola, Italy; Kaštela, Croatia; Belgrade, Serbia. In parallel, the methodology has been validated by performing a detailed seismic assessment of more than 25 buildings, and the results have been compared with the results of the proposed expeditious method. The results show a good correlation between the two methods, for example, the structural response index obtained from the expeditious method and the capacity/demand ratio obtained from the conventional assessment method.

Keywords

• unreinforced masonry structures
• Adriseismic project
• seismic vulnerability assessment
• risk prediction
• seismic failure mechanisms
• existing buildings