Claudio Modena

University of Padova | UNIPD

The Italian bridge asset is characterized by aged structures, most of which made of reinforced concrete, needing retrofit interventions to improve both their seismic performance and load-bearing capacity towards the increased traffic volume. In order to provide a series of guidelines for retrofit, a research project, carried out by the ReLUIS conso...

The correct estimation of modal parameters has an important role in ensuring the structural reliability of existing bridges. Operational modal analysis provides rather accurate extraction of natural frequency and mode shapes, but the corresponding damping estimates are subjected to higher uncertainties. This paper reports the results of ambient and...

Churches struck by the earthquake sequence of 2016–2017 in Central Italy confirmed their seismic vulnerability, significantly higher than the one of other unreinforced masonry structures. This resulted in a much wider area affected by significant damages to churches, which were characterised by a rich variability of materials, typologies, dimension...

La risposta sismica di strutture in muratura sottoposte all'azione sismica è un interessante tema di ricerca che diviene maggiormente avvincente nel caso di strutture snelle ed alte, quali ad esempio le ciminiere, dove il comportamento dinamico risulta determinante. La posizione spettrale delle frequenze naturali, tipicamente basse per le strutture...

Seismic assessment of archaeological sites has an increasing role in the definition of reliable conservation strategies of such vulnerable structures, with the combined objectives of verifying the structural safety to code standards and preserving the cultural heritage significance. Aging of materials, anthropogenic and environmental factors may ca...

A series of non-destructive techniques were applied to the masonry building of the Sarno Baths in Pompeii, Italy, aimed at improving knowledge of the condition of the site, to integrate and identify its construction and to provide data for structural evaluations. In particular: i)the current conditions of the various masonry types were identified t...

This research focuses on estimating the axial force of historical metal tie-rods by means of non-destructive testing (NDT) which provides useful information for calibrating structural models. The first part of this work describes the behavior of tie-rods, emphasizing the key role played by cross-section stiffness, which is usually neglected in the...

Caesarea Maritima is one of the most important archaeological sites in Israel. Excavations and studies have been carried out on it since the mid-20th century and have unearthed ruins of the ancient Herodian, Roman, Byzantine and Crusader monuments and buildings. This paper focuses on the Roman government complex, placed to the south of the harbour...

Experimental tests have shown that unreinforced masonry (URM) infill walls are affected by simultaneous loading in their in-plane and out-of-plane directions, but there have been few attempts to represent this interaction in nonlinear time history analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with URM infill walls. In this paper, a recently propos...

The definition of strategies for the preservation and protection of cultural heritage is a topical issue, especially in view of the increasing relevance of the theme of seismic risk mitigation and reduction. The prediction of the impact an earthquake could have on existing buildings requires the knowledge of their dynamic behaviour. The procedure t...

Il terremoto di Norcia del 30 ottobre 2016 ha provocato gravi danni alla Basilica di San Benedetto, collocata al centro della cittadina nell’ omonima piazza. Il diffuso quadro di danno e gli ampi crolli hanno reso necessario un tempestivo intervento di messa in sicurezza, sia per garantire la conservazione degli elementi architettonici e decorativi...

The paper presents structural health monitoring (SHM) activities performed on some representative cultural heritage (CH) buildings in the city of l’Aquila after the strong earthquake (Mw = 6.3) that struck the Abruzzo region (central Italy) on April 6, 2009. The severity and the extent of damages caused by the earthquake to historical buildings and...

The use of Externally Bonded Reinforcement (EBR) techniques is widely increasing in the last decades to strengthen both masonry and RC constructions. The use of different EBR configurations is well established also in the refurbishment of historical masonry constructions. The performance of different EBR techniques applied on existing historic maso...

Today, the scientific community has recognised that the structural safety aspects of existing masonry buildings cannot be treated according to standard procedures that are fit for new constructions. Hence, new approaches for assessing the actual structural performance of existing masonry buildings and developing more appropriate methods and criteri...

This paper reports the research activities carried out on Villa Diomede in Pompeii, built during the “Pre-Roman period” (i.e. the 3rd century BC) and discovered between 1771 and 1774 during the archaeological excavations. It is one of the greatest private buildings of Pompeii and it is located on the western corner of the modern archeological site....

In the framework of an investigation campaign carried out in June 2015 by the authors on four ancient water towers (10–20 BC) in the archaeological site of Pompeii, modal analysis and output-only identification techniques were employed to extract the dynamic properties in order to assess structural vulnerabilities and support numerical model updati...

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10518-017-0125-7 - ABSTRACT. Existing unreinforced multi-leaf stone masonry (URM) buildings are one of the most earthquake prone types of construction. Failure typically occurs even at low levels of earthquake-induced loads, with the out-of-plane delamination of masonry leaves and consequent collapse of...

Timber is one of the construction materials widely used in historical structures all over the world. Particularly in China, main historic building and architectural heritage is made of timber structure, the traditional system is a pure wooden framework, which two main ones are Tai-liang and Chuan-dou. They are composed by vertical columns that begi...

Most of the Italian building stock and mainly all the set of cultural heritage monuments are unreinforced masonry buildings (URM). In this work particular attention is given to the URM churches typology by means of a survey form (Scheda Chiese Model A-DC) adopted by experts to evaluate the building safety immediately after the event. This form repo...

After the earthquakes that stroke Amatrice on the 24 th of August 2016 (Mw 6.0) and later on Norcia on the 26 th of October first (Mw 5.4-Mw 5.9) and the 30 th October later (Mw 6.5) an extensive survey campaign has been done on structures coordinated by the department of Civil Protection. The first survey of buildings was performed by means of a s...

Orthotropic steel decks, directly subjected to traffic loads, are very sensitive to fatigue: defects mainly appear as cracks, which affect the top plates, longitudinal ribs and cross-beams of the deck. In this kind of bridges, structural health monitoring can be effectively adopted in characterising the safety threshold of the ongoing fatigue damag...

The seismic vulnerability of city centres is commonly assessed by extending the study methods applied to single buildings to urban aggregations. This approach is not always applicable at territorial scale, as it is uneconomical in terms of time and costs. An innovative method provides reasonable large-scale a priori estimation of parameters not dir...

This paper deals with the dynamic response of a free-standing ancient column in the Roman Agora of Thessaloniki, Greece as a means to shed more light on the complex behaviour of rocking bodies under seismic excitation. Discrete Element Method numerical analyses were carried out with the use of multiple seismic records based on the disaggregation of...

Developing suitable tools to assess the actual structural performance and designing and executing interventions to improve that performance is a key issue in the field of conservation and enhancement of architectural heritage. This research paper presents the results of five full-scale destructive tests performed on the Castello di San Pietro in Ve...

This paper presents the calibration procedures of a numerical model based on the results of uniaxial and shear-compression tests on three-leaf stone masonry panels in scale 1:1 and 2:3, both in original and injected conditions. The stone masonry panels were simulated considering a macro-scale approach, where a nonlinear continuum damage model with...

Historic buildings from seismic zones have recorded important damages after earthquakes. Due to this aspect, in current design codes for consolidations of some countries there are special calculations for historic buildings. The development of the investigation methods for the damages developed in the historic bearing structures revealed the fact t...

Earthquakes cause severe damage to masonry structures due to inertial forces acting in the normal direction to the plane of the walls. The out-of-plane behavior of masonry walls is complex and depends on several parameters, such as material and geometric properties of walls, connections between structural elements, the characteristics of the input...

Ties in masonry arches and vaults play a key role in constraining their horizontal thrust. The paper focuses on vault ties and presents a study of existing iron ties in several historical constructions. The first aim of this research is to collect a relevant amount of samples, in order to obtain a database on their relevant typological features, su...

The development of appropriate tools to assess the actual structural performances taking into account also seismic actions and to design and execute interventions capable to improve such performances, is a key issue in the field of conservation and valorisation of architectural heritage. In the paper are presented the results of five full scale des...

The seismic vulnerability assessment on a territorial scale requires the application of simplified procedures. Data collection is usually carried out by adopting external inspections; for this reason the knowledge gained for the considered buildings is usually not complete and lack of information has to be managed. The definition of a methodology w...

The seismic vulnerability of historical centers at a territorial scale cannot be assessed performing detailed analysis which are usually adopted at the single building scale. In fact, a traditional complete survey would be extremely time-consuming and not sustainable for this purpose. The approach described in this paper is based on the idea that i...

This paper tackles the method of conservation of the Government Complex (CC area) in the archaeological site of Caesarea Maritima (Israel). It is a 65 by 55 m2 insula, covered by a sequence of barrel vaults and free-standing walls datable to different ages, characterized by different building technologies and modification undergone during the centu...

In the last decade the number of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems designed and implemented on historic structures increased exponentially. Monitoring perfectly meets principles and guidelines of the recently issued Italian and European seismic codes as it is considered a strategic activity in the knowledge process of historic buildings, i...

In this paper a procedure for the evaluation of the interaction between existing buildings’ seismic damage and residual roads’ serviceability is proposed. The problem of the interaction between jutting buildings and roads is relevant in the seismic assessment of the residual functionality of roadway networks belonging to urban centres, where, in ge...

Brick and Block Masonry - ISBN 978-1-138-02999-6, pp 2455-2462 The numerous and historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in Italy are frequently ex-posed to earthquakes, resulting in casualties as well as both cultural and economic losses. Observations of their performance following recent earthquakes have confirmed that URM buildings warran...

The seismic evaluation of existing masonry buildings is a fundamental subject matter in order to define prevention strategies and to reduce seismic risk. Multiple factors can affect the structural safety of each single building and their effects can be defined through the adoption of different analysis methodologies. One of these is the nonlinear s...

The identification of procedures for the seismic risk mitigation of historical centers necessarily requires a preliminary study of the seismic vulnerability assessment on a urban scale of its building heritage. Methodologies defined for the latter purpose should be appropriately calibrated considering building features and construction techniques o...

Italian historical centres are mostly characterized by aggregate buildings. As defined by the Italian codes (Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni 2008 and Circolare n. 617), the analysis of the most representative local mechanisms of collapse must be performed in order to assess their vulnerability. In this article, the out-of-plane local mechanisms o...

The current approach for the seismic study of existing buildings is based on the individuation of the building’s masonry category and on the choice of the appropriate mechanical parameters to perform reliable structural analysis. A collection and a review of a significant amount of available data obtained from the more used experimental test proced...

During the last decade the Laboratory of the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering of the University of Padova, together with a Spin-Off of the same University, Expin srl, carried out more than one-hundred on site double flat jacks on masonry panels of a relevant sample of North and central Italy existing masonry building...