Seismic retrofit of school building “Liceo Vito Capialbi” by means of dissipative steel braces
- Client Provincial Administration of Vibo Valentia
- Site Vibo Valentia
- Date of service 2014-2017
- Assignment Seismic vulnerability assessment. Preliminary, definitive, detailed design phases. Health and safety coordination in the construction phases. Work Supervision
- Amount of work € 464.000,00
- Data Sheet Towards a resilient school (9 pp - 1MB)
This assignment concerned the design of seismic retrofitting of the "Block A" of the school complex "Vito Capialbi" located in Vibo Valentia. The structure was built in the late 70s with reinforced concrete frames. The block has an "L" shape plant with a maximum size of 18x36 m. and it consists of three floors.
A campaign of tests and inspections on the structure was carried out in order to obtain the maximum Level of Knowledge, for example: schmidt rebound hammer test; inspections with electromagnetic techniques; ultrasonic tests; infrared thermography; compressive strength test and carbonation tests on concrete cores; tensile strength test on steel samples.
The existing reinforced concrete frames have been seismically retrofitted by means of dissipative steel bracing system.
This retrofit technique has been chosen considering that steel bracing systems show several advantages such as their suitability for prefabrication, their relatively low weight, and the possibility to maintain inner and outer openings. Moreover, the braces may be directly connected to the concrete elements without using steel frames fixed to the concrete structure. Ultimately, the use of dissipative elements (namely steel hysteretic dampers) increases the capacity of the building to withstand seismic load by an energy dissipation process.
Due the particularities of this intervention non-linear numerical analysis were conducted either both with static method (pushover analysis) and dynamic method (time-history).