Ricerc@Sapienza

Recent lessons from past earthquakes repeatedly showed the vulnerability of existing buildings and of non-structural
elements. In the past decades, efforts have mainly focused on improving the seismic performance of the structural
skeleton. Although buildings designed according to modern and recent seismic codes generally performed as expected
by securing the human life, the observed damage was often deemed too expensive to be repaired and stakeholders often

Post-earthquake damage reports have continuously highlighted the significant vulnerability of non-structural
elements to seismic events. Non-structural damage has severe impact in the building recovery, increasing the socio-
economic losses even for low intensity events. In the last few years, research efforts have focused on the
development of innovative non-structural solutions, to be combined with damage-resistant structural skeletons in
order to obtain an overall high-performance building. As part of a European Union (EU)-funded project, the

In this paper, a simplified procedure for the evaluation of the seismic performance of bridge piers founded on caissons subjected to strong ground motions is outlined. To this end, the up-per-bound semi-empirical relationships proposed in [1] are considered for the estimation of the seismic performance, expressed in terms of the maximum and permanent values of the deck drift ratio attained during and at the end of the seismic event.

The seismic performance of dams must be checked against expected ground motions verifying the possible occurrence of a serviceability or of an ultimate limit state. In this framework it is generally recognised that the earthquake-induced settlement of the dam crest can be assumed as a reliable index of performance since it is representative of the overall seismic response of the dam and is suitable for the evaluation of the level of damage induced by earthquake loading. Accordingly, threshold values of the crest settlement can be introduced to check the occurrence of a given limit state.

In this paper, the influence of inelastic soil behaviour on the seismic performance of bridge piers supported by caisson foundations is assessed. The results of an extensive parametric study, performed assuming a linear elastic and an elastic-plastic soil behaviour, are compared, showing the strong influence of the inelastic soil response. The geometrical properties of caissons and piers are varied; the systems are subjected to seismic records capable of mobilising the shear strength of the soil.

Potential instability of large existing earth dams is a major source of seismic
vulnerability of Italy. In fact, most of them were designed before the adoption of modern
building codes, without accounting for seismic loads explicitly. Hence, there is an urgent
necessity to investigate the response of most existing earth dams to severe earthquake loading.

Seismic performance of earth dams can nowadays be performed via dynamic analyses using constitutive models of sufficient accuracy in describing cyclic soil behaviour. However, a number of assumptions different from soil model affect the problem as a whole.

This paper describes a new procedure for the performance-based design of geosynthetic-reinforced earth-retaining walls (GREs) using the pseudo-static approach. In this procedure, the seismic coefficient k is calibrated against given levels of seismic performance, the latter typically expressed in terms of threshold values of the permanent displacements accumulated during the seismic event. An equivalence between the seismic-induced upper-bound displacements and the seismic coefficient k is obtained applying the Newmark’s

This paper investigates the combined effect of the vertical component of the input motion and of the weakening effect associated to pore-pressure build-up with reference to a zoned earth dam for which the most recent probabilistic seismic hazard analyses promoted the need of evaluating its seismic performance.

The seismic design of fasteners used to anchor nonstructural components (NSCs) to concrete structures constitutes a crucial task within the context of a modern performance-based philosophy, which accounts for all the components of a building. This is particularly relevant when the NSCs are required to withstand strong seismic events with minor damage. The present paper introduces a new generation of high-performance post-installed anchors incorporating supplemental damping-referred to as EQ-Rod-for reducing the acceleration suffered by NSCs.