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  • FULL AND PERFORATED METAL PLATE SHEAR WALLS AS BRACING SYSTEMS FOR SEISMIC UPGRADING OF EXISTING RC BUILDINGS

    Metal Plate Shear Walls (MPSWs) represent an effective, practical and economical system for the seismic protection of existing RC framed buildings. They consist of one or more metallic thin plates, bolted or welded to a stiff steel frame, which are installed in the bays of RC framed structures. A case study of an existing RC residential 5-storey building, designed between the ‘60s and ‘70s of the last century and retrofitted with MPSWs, has been examined in this paper. The retrofitting design of the existing structure has been carried out by using four different MPSWs, namely three common full panels made of steel, low yield steel and aluminium and one innovative perforated steel plates. Finally, the used retrofitting solutions have been compared each to other in terms of performance and economic parameters, allowing to select the best intervention.

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  • AN ADAPTIVE CAPACITY SPECTRUM METHOD FOR ESTIMATING SEISMIC RESPONSE OF STEEL MOMENT-RESISTING FRAMES

    An adaptive version of the capacity spectrum method is proposed to estimate deformation demands of steel moment-resisting frames under seismic loads. Its computational attractiveness and capability of providing satisfactory predictions of seismic demands in comparison with those obtained by other advanced nonlinear static procedures in literature are examined. Both effectiveness and accuracy of these approximated methods based on pushover analysis are verified through an extensive comparative study involving both regular and irregular steel moment-resisting frames. The results obtained by nonlinear static procedures and nonlinear dynamic time-history analysis under spectrum-compatible accelerograms are eventually compared. The proposed procedure generally gives a more accurate solution than that obtained from the other nonlinear static procedures.

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  • NUMERICAL FRAMEWORK FOR NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL LIGHT-FRAME WOOD STRUCTURES

    This paper presents and assesses a new numerical framework for the nonlinear, inelastic analysis of two-dimensional (2D) vertical wood building systems that incorporate sheathed light-frame wood shear walls as seismic force-resisting system. The 2D building model is based on a sub-structuring approach that considers each floor diaphragm as a rigid body with three kinematic degrees-of-freedom (DOF). Each inter-storey shear wall assembly, including the floor diaphragms above and below, can then be simulated by a six-DOF sub-structure element with internal nonlinear DOF. The shear wall element takes into account deformations in the framing members, contact/ separation phenomena between framing members and diaphragms, anchoring equipment such as anchor bolts and hold-downs and all sheathing-to-framing connections. Corotational descriptions are used to solve for displacement fields that satisfy the equilibrium equations in the deformed configuration, accounting for geometric nonlinearity and P-Δ effects. To appraise the proposed numerical framework, the predictions of the numerical model are compared to experimental results from single and two-storey full-scale shear wall specimens. These examples demonstrate the capability of the numerical framework to simulate accurate load paths in the shear wall assemblies and successfully predict variations in strength, stiffness and energy dissipation characteristics of the seismic force-resisting system.