The Influence of the Aggregate Configuration on the Seismic Assessment of Unreinforced Masonry Buildings in Historic Urban Areas

Valentina Cima (), Valentina Tomei, Ernesto Grande and Maura Imbimbo
Additional contact information
Valentina Cima: Department of Engineering Science, University of Studies Guglielmo Marconi, Via Plinio 44, 00193 Rome, Italy
Valentina Tomei: Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, Italy
Ernesto Grande: Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, Italy
Maura Imbimbo: Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, Italy

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 10, 1-27

Abstract: Unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in historic urban areas of European countries are generally clustered in an aggregate configuration and are often characterized by façade walls mutually interconnected with adjacent ones. As a result, the seismic performance of buildings in an aggregate configuration can be affected by the mutual interaction between the adjacent units. This interaction, often called the aggregate effect , could significantly influence the level of the seismic vulnerability of URM buildings in aggregate configuration toward in-plane and out-of-plane mechanisms, the latter being the object of the present paper. Traditional methods for assessing the seismic vulnerability of URM buildings neglect the interactions between adjacent buildings, potentially underestimating the actual vulnerability. This study aims to derive fragility curves specific for UMR buildings in aggregate configuration and proposes an innovative methodology that introduces the aggregate effect into an analytical approach, previously developed by the authors for isolated URM buildings. The aggregate effect is modeled by accounting for the friction forces arising among adjacent facades during the development of out-of-plane overturning mechanisms by considering different scenarios, based on how façade walls interact with neighboring structures (e.g., whether they are connected to transverse and/or lateral coplanar ones). The proposed approach is applied to a real case study of an Italian historical center. The obtained results demonstrate that the aggregate effect significantly influences the fragility curves of URM buildings arranged in aggregate configurations. This highlights the importance of considering this effect and the usefulness of the proposed approach for large-scale assessments of seismic vulnerability in historic urban areas, contributing to sustainable disaster risk prevention.

Keywords: aggregate effect; building in aggregate; unreinforced masonry; out-of-plane mechanisms; historic urban area; fragility curves (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4172/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/10/4172/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:10:p:4172-:d:1395730

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().