Key Engineering Materials Vol. 628

Abstract: One of the main objectives of this study is to search for the verification of a hypothesis. It is an attempt to understand if it is possible to apply the method developed by the Italian School of Typology to read the planned city of Western Europe to other parts of the world and to investigate if this way of planning can also be extended to other zones that have different geographical and cultural properties. Urfa, in fact, is believed to provide a fertile ground with its multi-cultural structure for such a research. It is a city situated in the southeast Turkey, which displays both the characteristics of Turkish and Syrian cultures. The analysis was conducted in various scales; that is, the territorial organism, the urban organism, the aggregative organism and the building organism. The graphic instruments were preferred to be the historic maps above all, the plan that regulates the city and the cadastral maps showing the actual situation that also indicate the recent developments and the distruction of the urban tissue. These reading instruments have been too limited and heterogeneous with respect to what we usually use. Therefore the releif of the most ancient part of the city has been made by the students.¹

Abstract: In ancient written sources earthquakes were mostly interpreted as a divine punishment for human sins, only few authors instead interpreted the seismic event as a phenomenon independent from human actions. Considering the built architectures as material documents, several examples can be found, suggesting that there was an empyrical knowledge of the consequences of earthquakes on buildings. Modern literature on the topic, mostly within engineering studies, lacking an historical approach, assumes that in ancient times science ignored the physical nature of seismic events and consequently declares that architects couldn’t consider dynamics in their projects. The close examination of some examples shows clearly that Roman, Islamic and Medieval architects had an empirical knowledge of dynamics, probably based on post-seismic reconstruction. This knowledge developed through history, so it is possible to outline a history of seismic design way before the Lisbon earthquake (1775), considered by many authors as the beginning of the history of seismic design.

Abstract: This study aims to give a contribution to the knowledge, and the use of it, in the safeguard and recovery of the architectural heritage of the old center in the center of coastal Apulia. It is an area characterized by settlement processes that, even though have been combined by the different specific situations, shape this territory as an homogeneous geographic-formal area.

Abstract: The interest in the study of public buildings in ancient nucleus of Jerusalem stems from the need to investigate the develop principles of the urban structure between the Tyropoeion Valley and the western edge and northern of the Haram al-Sharif. The building fabric including madrasas, Ribat, hammams and the Suq al-Qattanin is only the latest result of a layering process culminating with the transformation work produced by Mamluks from 1260 until 1517. The identification of a modular distance between the routes or the measure correspondence in the individual blocks, suggest the adaptation of a previous planned urban fabric, dating probably at least to the Herodian period. The increase of religious pilgrimages and trades in Jerusalem during the Mamluk sultanate has stimulated an intensive building activity, centered mainly in the construction of Madrasas and Ribat, organically aggregated to form an urban fabric heavily infilled. In a period running from mid-XIII at the end of the fifteenth century, the building fabric finds its final set, then completed by Ottomans between the sixteenth and seventeenth century and involving especially, in addition to the reconstruction of the walls, the building of small libraries, the upgrading of existing buildings and construction of fountains in nodal points of urban structure. The paper explains a research in progress about historical urban fabrics of Jerusalem, [1] in which the close relation between the urban structure and the buildings is one of the main aspects toward an urban renewal hypothesis of the Old City, that is characterized by complex relationship among international heritage programs, public safety, and contemporary uses coherent with the role of the ancient public buildings according to the urban history.

Abstract: One of the most challenging problems of the ancient architectural heritage is its protection from fire risk. The “Italian Risk assessment map of the cultural heritage” (Carta del Rischio [1]), is a GIS-based platform developed by the Italian Central Institute for Restoration (ISCR) to assess the exposure and the vulnerability to static-structural, environmental, anthropogenic and seismic risk of the historical and cultural heritage. The paper marks a new phase of development of the Risk Map Information System aiming at integrating the vulnerability estimation of the historical buildings with a new method derived from the Fire Risk Index Method for Multi-storey Apartment Buildings (FRIM-MAB). The new index-based method has been tested in a full scale case-study in comparison with both the Italian prescriptive assessment and the performance-based fire protection approach. Results show the capability of the approach, its reliability and user friendliness.

Abstract: The study of the Norman tower in the abandoned village of Craco (MT) is part of a larger research aimed at the development of a project for conservation and enhancement of the entire urban organism which, complying with the nature of the area, can not take into account the geological critical condition and the consistent safety problem.

Abstract: Recent seismic events showed the dramatic need, especially in case of historical and existing buildings, of important strengthening activities to be carried out. In order to properly design them, a careful assessment of real structural behaviour and load-carrying capacity of these buildings is strongly required. This is particularly important when dealing with constructions made of heterogeneous materials like masonry or stonework, where often conventional analysis techniques do not behave satisfactorily. This paper presents the results of an extensive experimental and numerical investigation on historical stone arches and vaults. A series of in-situ tests were carried out on different types of stone arches belonging to a large building of the XIX century, with the purpose of investigating their mechanical response and obtaining the structural behaviour of stonework under different types of in-plane loads. The experimental results were compared with the numerical solutions obtained by a detailed finite element model of a portion of the structure. Numerical linear and non-linear FE analyses were conducted in order to reproduce the experimental tests and analyse the interaction between series of arches that are linked by cross vault or tunnel vault. Finally, non-linear analyses with vertical and horizontal loads were carried out with the scope of simulating the seismic effect and to verify the ductility of this type of vaulted structures.

Abstract: The seismic vulnerability assessment of a building requires a comprehensive knowledge of both building structural features and soils geophysical parameters. To achieve a vulnerability assessment at the urban scale a large amount of data would be necessary, with a consequent involvement of time and economical resources. The aim of this paper is hence to propose a simplified procedure to evaluate the seismic vulnerability of urban centres and possible seismic damage scenarios in order to identify critical areas and/or building typologies to plan future actions of seismic risk mitigation and prevention. The procedure is applied to the outstanding case study of the city of Florence. The research is based on the definition of major building typologies related to construction periods and type of the structural system (masonry or reinforced concrete), the identification of a set of sample buildings, the analysis of the dynamic behaviour and the evaluation of a vulnerability index with an expeditious approach. The obtained results allow to define potential vulnerability and post-event damage scenarios related to the expected levels of peak ground acceleration.

Abstract: After the Italian earthquakes of May 2012, an extensive research program had been performed to assess the state of preservation of the tallest historic tower in Mantua, Italy. Subsequently, a continuous dynamic monitoring system was installed in the tower, with seismic and structural health monitoring purposes. After a brief description of the investigated tower and its state of preservation, the paper summarizes some results of the long-term dynamic monitoring.