ON THE SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION IN THE SEISMIC
RESPONSE OF A MONITORED MASONRY SCHOOL BUILDING
STRUCK BY THE 2016-2017 CENTRAL ITALY EARTHQUAKE
Filomena de Silva
1
, Annachiara Piro
1
, Andrea Brunelli
2
, Serena Cattari
2
, Fulvio Parisi
1
,
Stefania Sica
3
and Francesco Silvestri
1
1
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
(filomena.desilva, annachiara.piro, fulvio.parisi, francesco.silvestri)@unina.it
2
University of Genova, DICCA, Genoa, Italy
andrea.brunelli@edu.unige.it, serena.cattari@unige.it
1
University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy
stefsica@unisannio.it
Abstract
The paper discusses the effects of Soil-Foundation-Structure (SFS) interaction on the seismic
response of the “Pietro Capuzi” school in Visso, a village located in the Marche region (Ita-
ly) that was severely damaged by the 2016-2017 Central Italy seismic sequence. The school is
a two-story masonry structure founded on simple enlargements of its loadbearing walls,
which are only partially embedded in the alluvial loose soil of the Nera river. The structure
was monitored as a strategic building by the Italian Seismic Observatory of Structures. The
dynamic behavior of the school under both ambient noise and the recently occurred seismic
events was interpreted and compared with numerical simulations. A 3D structural model of
the school was realized according to the equivalent frame approach with addition of springs
that simulate a compliant base. The spring stiffness, representing the real part of soil-
foundation dynamic impedance, was calibrated on the soil shear modulus mobilized during
the seismic excitation, inferred from the deconvolution up to the bedrock of the accelerogram
recorded at the underground floor of the school. The amplitude of the acceleration and the
evolution with time of the frequency resulted from the analyses of the compliant-base and
fixed-base models under the three main events of the Central Italy earthquake were compared
to the actual records.
Keywords: masonry structure, equivalent frame modelling, impedance functions, soil-
foundation-structure interaction, dynamic behaviour, structural permanent monitoring.
1853
COMPDYN 2019
7
th
ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on
Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering
M. Papadrakakis, M. Fragiadakis (eds.)
Crete, Greece, 24–26 June 2019
Available online at www.eccomasproceedia.org
Eccomas Proceedia COMPDYN (2019) 1853-1862
ISSN:2623-3347 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Eccomas Proceedia.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of COMPDYN 2019.
doi: 10.7712/120119.7041.19395