Abstract: In the present paper, a non-linear numerical study on the 13 century masonry bell tower of the church of San Pietro di Coppito is described. The aim is to have an insight into the causes at the base of the partial collapse suffered by the structure during the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009. To this aim, two different numerical analyses have been performed namely non-linear static (pushov...

Torsion of many symmetric structures, which were designed based on the seismic codes, is due to their asymmetricity induced during inelastic behavior. Although the structure was designed symmetrically assuming elastic based criteria, different factors such as material inconsistency in structure, construction details discrepancy and construction errors may result in asymmetric behavior in inelas...

Structural walls commonly used as efficient structural elements to resist lateral and vertical loads. Diverse performance of bearing wall system in past earthquakes, motivates investigation on the adequacy of current seismic design provision for these walls. This study considers seismic performance of model walls of bearing wall and building frame systems designed as ordinary and special struct...

A two-step strategy for the mechanical analysis of unreinforced masonry (URM) structures, subjected to either in- or out-of-plane loading, is presented. At a first step, semi-automatic digital tool allows parametric modeling structure that, together with an upper bound limit and heuristic optimization solver, enables tracking most prone failure mechanism. second coupled concurrent FE model micr...

Pushover analysis is an efficient method for the seismic evaluation of buildings under severe earthquakes. This paper aims to develop and verify pushover methodology reinforced concrete frames. technique depends on a nonlinear representation structure by using SAP2000 software. The properties plastic hinges will be defined generating moment-curvature all frame sections (beams columns). verifica...

Due to their dual behavior under tension and compression, structures with tension-only members show non-linear behavior. To analize such structures, it is necessary to use a nonlinear analysis scheme. Nonlinear analysis methods generally use gradual loading techniques with/without modification of stiffness matrix of the structure. These methods, in addition to being time consuming algorithms, a...

This paper presents a new methodology for the displacement-based seismic design of symmetric single-storey wood-frame buildings. Previous displacement-based design efforts were based on the direct displacement-based design approach, which uses a substitute linear system with an appropriate stiffness and viscous damping combination. Despite the fact that this method has shown to produce promisin...

This paper presents first a valid, fully non-linear 2-D numerical model that can capture realistically the in-plane hysteretic behaviour of reinforced concrete (R/C) frames with masonry infills when they are subjected to combined vertical and cyclic horizontal loads in order to predict their post-elastic earthquake bahaviour. The effectiveness of this simulation was validated by comparing the n...