On 14 August 2018 at 11:35 AM, a relevant portion (about 243 m) of the viaduct over the Polcevera river in Genoa collapsed, killing 43 people. The bridge was designed in the early 1960s by Riccardo Morandi, a well-known Italian engineer, and opened to the public in...
Numerical prediction of progressive collapse of buildings due to extreme loading is still a challenging task. However, increased computational power makes it nowadays possible to analyze not only small-scale connections and mid-size building elements, but also full...
Extreme events (i.e. terrorist attacks, vehicle impacts, explosions, etc.) often cause local damage to building structures and pose a serious threat when one or more vertical load-bearing components fail, leading to the progressive collapse of the entire structure or...
Extreme events (i.e. terrorist attacks, vehicle impacts, explosions, etc.) often cause local damage to building structures and pose a serious threat when one or more vertical load-bearing components fail, leading to the progressive collapse of the entire structure or...
In this work, the Applied Element Method (AEM) is employed to reproduce the dynamic response of three full-scale unreinforced masonry (URM) house specimens tested on a shake-table. Two of the test specimens correspond to a calcium-silicate terraced house typology...
TThe Applied Element Method (AEM) is a relatively recent addition to the discrete elements methods family. Initially conceived to model blast events and concrete structures, its use in the modelling of masonry structures subjected to earthquake actions is steadily...
Ambient vibration measurements and 3-D nonlinear time-history numerical modeling are used to assess the retrofitting measures conducted in a 6-story unreinforced masonry building (URM) built in the end of the 19th century in Switzerland. Retrofitting measures were...
Significant research effort has been devoted in recent years to the evaluation of the capacity of steel frame structures to resist progressive collapse after sudden column loss. Due to the complex load-structure interaction and material behaviour, it can be very...
A large number of buildings in regions with low to medium seismic hazard have been designed without considering earthquake actions. Retrofitting of all buildings that fail to meet modern code requirements is economically, technically and environmentally...
When subjected to blast loading, fragments ejected by concrete or masonry structures present a number of potential hazards. Airborne fragments pose a high risk of injury and secondary damage, with the resulting debris field causing major obstructions. The capability...
