Advanced Seismic Evaluation of Relevant Architectures

Dear Colleagues,

Modern architectural trends and languages adopted in recent decades in strongly urbanized areas have led to building constructions characterized by daring shapes and/or relevant heights. From a structural standpoint, for these buildings, earthquakes represent an impacting threat because of the lack of regularity, the influence of second-order effects related to significant slendernesses, and the huge masses that can be potentially excited along the height. Often, traditional construction technologies and conventional analysis methods are not sufficient, and an additional effort is required of designers for evaluating the suitability of these structures in withstanding seismic excitations.

Although for different reasons, the same type of issue concerns old, valuable existing buildings constituting in several countries the national cultural heritage, namely, monuments, religious buildings (churches, mosques, minarets, pagodas, stupas, etc.), noble palaces, museums, etc. These constructions are usually made of masonry and are characterized by the presence of recurrent structural elements that allow an easy interpretation of their structural behavior. However, the poor mechanical features and the scarce maintenance of the masonry materials, as well as the lack of those essential anti-seismic systems—for example, iron/timber ties—require strongly nonlinear analyses, possibly in the dynamic field, able to also capture those brittle failures arising even for low earthquake demands.

In the light of these remarks, with this Special Issue, we are interested in collecting papers promoting the use of advanced retrofitting techniques and sophisticated structural analysis methods to assess the seismic behavior of buildings with high architectural value. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Application of nonlinear methods for tall buildings;
• Seismic evaluation of complex building shapes;
• New architectures seismically protected with special devices;
• Seismic assessment of cultural heritage;
• Advanced strengthening and retrofitting techniques.   

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Brando
Dr. Maria Giovanna Masciotta
Prof. Dr. Massimo Latour
Guest Editors

Short Biography

Giuseppe Brando is Associate Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Chieti-Pescara.
He published almost 200 research papers focused on diffenet topics. Among these, steel structures, seismic protection through dampers and seismi risk of cultural heritage are worthy of being mentioned. He is involved in several national and international research programs, which develop new strategies for the seismic risk mitigation at different scales. At the University of Chieti-Pescara He is part of the commitee for the Ph.D Program "Engineering, Earth and Planetary Science". He is also part of the SC9-TC250 sub-commitee, encharged to draft the new version of Eurocode 9.

Maria Giovanna Masciotta is Assistant Professor at the University “Gabriele d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara (Italy) and Research Associate at the Institute of Information Science and Technologies "A. Faedo" of the National Research Council, Pisa (Italy). In 2015 she obtained her dual-degree PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Minho (Portugal) and the University of “Gabriele d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara, being therefore awarded with the mention of “Doctor Europaeus”. Between 2015 and 2019 she worked as a Post-Doc Researcher at the University of Minho within the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE) and she was a lecturer in “Inspection & Diagnosis” of the International Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC). Maria Giovanna Masciotta's scientific research activity embraces the areas of inspection & diagnosis, NDT, dynamic testing, operational and experimental modal analyses, numerical modelling, structural health monitoring, damage identification, seismic vulnerability, maintenance and preventive conservation of built cultural heritage, having a track record of publications on these topics in both international peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

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• seismic nonlinear analysis
• seismic protection
• tall buildings
• complex architectural shapes
• cultural heritage
• seismic strengthening