Seismic assessment and retrofitting of an old masonry barrack

The evaluation of the seismic vulnerability of an abandoned masonry barrack, in its former and retrofitted configuration, is here presented. Preliminarily, a geometric survey of the building was made to determine the actual geometry of the building. Flat-jack and shove tests on masonry walls were performed to characterize material properties. Both geometric and material information were integrated in a 3D BIM model of the barrack, for further exportation into a FEM software. The barrack is composed of three independent buildings and, due to its symmetry, only two FEM models were implemented. For linear analysis, two 3D FEM models adopting plate elements, to represent the walls, and beam elements, to model columns and wood roof elements, were created. To analyze the non-linear behavior of the structure, other two equivalent frame models with concentrated plastic hinges were implemented to obtain the capacity curves of the buildings before and after the retrofitting interventions. The analyses results have been compared in terms of risk indices to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed interventions.