Research Information System
7th International Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology-ICEES, Antalya, Turkey, 6 - 10 November 2023, vol.401, pp.191-204, (Full Text)
The conservation of architectural heritage in seismic prone areas is still challenging, despite the recent developments in numerical and analytical tools for seismic assessment of unreinforced masonry structures. The increase in computational capacity has permitted the management of complex numerical models and the simulation of their dynamic behavior during a seismic event. In common practice, engineers often rely on using real ground-motion records compatible with site seismic spectra to assess heritage structures. However, the database of real ground motions is not large enough to meet all requests. To fill this gap, ground motion simulations offer an alternative method for accessing the full time-series of earthquake events. Yet, to guarantee their accuracy and efficiency in engineering practice, additional investigation is necessary to validate them. In this paper, the ground motion records of the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake are simulated through the stochastic finite-fault simulation approach. The obtained results are then compared against the recorded data. A typical unreinforced masonry building of Central Italy was selected as a case study, and time-history analyses were performed in the framework of the Applied Element Method. i.e., by discretizing masonry components through rigid blocks and nonlinear deformable interfaces between them. The outcomes of analyses are subsequently discussed in terms of displacement capacity, base shear and amplification of base acceleration encompassing both real and simulated record-based time-history analyses.