Enrico Spacone

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Chieti-Pescara

Half-joints in reinforced concrete girder bridges are generally considered critical elements, susceptible to degradation and potentially impacting the overall structural behavior. An Italian project carried out by ReLUIS interuniversity consortium addresses theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies on critical aspects of existing road bridge...

The aim of this work is to identify a suitable methodology capable of integrating multiscale spatial information about an historic center drawn from a Geographic Information System (GIS) and Historical Building Information Modeling (HBIM). The method is based on a multiscale development system that can efficiently handle different types of geospati...

This paper explores the applicability of different methods to construct a Building information System Model (BIM) from 2D plans and, more specifically, cadastral plans. The explored procedures use three different approaches to build BIMs: one manual, one semi-automatic based on Rhinoceros/Grasshopper, and one based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)....

This paper explores the applicability of different methods to construct a Building information System Model (BIM) from 2D plans and, more specifically, cadastral plans. The explored procedures use three different approaches to build BIMs: one manual, one semi-automatic based on Rhinoceros/Grasshopper, and one based on Artificial Intelligence (AI)....

Simplified building models are a valuable option for seismic assessment at the regional scale. These models often use calibrated springs to model column behaviour, and recent advances have made them suitable for capturing torsional response in Reinforced‐Concrete Moment‐Resisting‐Frames. Nevertheless, their validation is typically achieved using fi...

A correct Intensity Measure (IM) selection is essential for Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) applications, as any probabilistic seismic demand model (PSDM) depends significantly on the IM. If a single IM can describe the complexity of the corresponding ground motion record, it can be defined as sufficient in an absolute sense. Howeve...

The present work explores a methodology that makes use of low-cost technologies for generating panoramic videos in historic settings (characterized by very narrow streets) for the rapid identification of buildings that have injuries or damages induced by seismic events. The methodology was tested in the historic center of Popoli Terme (Italy). Impo...

The aim of the paper is to identify an efficient method for transforming the point cloud into parametric objects in the fields of architecture, engineering and construction by four main steps: 3D survey of the structure under investigation, generation of a new point cloud based on feature extraction and identification of suitable threshold values,...

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Probabilistic nonlinear static analysis-PNSA Probabilistic nonlinear dynamic analysis-PNDA Infill-frame interaction Shear failure Epistemic uncertainty Sensitivity analysis Tornado diagram A B S T R A C T The seismic response of infilled frame reinforced concrete structures is affected by different sources of aleator...

Recent studies have shown the importance of including the seismic input directionality in nonlinear analyses for an accurate prediction of the structural demand on frame structures. This paper proposes a new method that includes the multi-directionality of the input seismic forces in Nonlinear Static Analyses (NSAs). Conventionally, the pushover (P...

Modeling of prestressed concrete beams and their degrading processes are relevant issues in the assessment of existing structures and infrastructures, particularly for bridges. This work focuses on the formulation and validation of a fiber beam finite element for prestressed concrete structural elements that accounts for nonlinear material behavior...

This paper discusses the main results of a full-scale shaking table test campaign carried out under the auspices of the EU funded research project SERA, whose objective is to investigate the seismic performance of three-leaf masonry walls with weak lime-mortar joints. These masonry walls are widely found in seismic prone regions in the Mediterranea...

This paper discusses the main results of a full-scale shaking table test carried out under the auspices of the EU funded research project SERA, whose objective is to investigate the seismic performance of three-leaf masonry walls with weak lime-mortar joints. These masonry walls are widely found in seismic prone regions in the Mediterranean area, t...

Damage modeling in prestressed concrete beams is a relevant issue in the assessment of existing structures, especially bridges. This work focuses on the formulation of a high-performance fiber beam element to model the nonlinear behavior of prestressed reinforced concrete beams and the progressive damaging phenomena. The proposed beam formulation r...

The historical earthquake activity that involved Andean countries in the last centuries makes the seismic risk evaluation associated to buildings in these areas an issue of crucial concern. Planning seismic risk mitigation policies requires an extensive knowledge of the territorial built environment, of the adopted construction techniques and of th...

Masonry is a composite material often modeled as an equivalent homogenous material. However, the complexity of its micro-structure leads to complex mechanical responses, which are almost impossible to capture accurately with homogenous constitutive models. Micro-modeling can be used in these scenarios, allowing for the explicit modeling of microstr...

This article discusses the main Engineering Demand Parameters (EDPs) found in the literature to define collapse of newly constructed reinforced concrete buildings. Currently, the definition of building collapse is still under debate, as different building codes and authors define them with different EDPs and even different values of the same EDPs.T...

This paper presents an innovative modelling approach for assessing the in-plane behaviour of masonry walls characterized by periodic arrangements of units and mortar joints. The proposed model is a typical d-FEM (Discontinuum Finite Element Model) consisting of deformable macro-blocks covering more than a single unit of masonry and separated by a r...

Peru, in particular in the area of Cusco, is characterized by a high seismic hazard. The city of Cusco, whose historic center was recognized as UNESCO site since 1983, has a long story of telluric events and the study of the seismic vulnerability of its buildings is a duty of relevant concern for the seismic risk assessment of the whole urban area....

This paper discusses the main results of a full-scale shaking table test campaign carried out under the auspices of the EU funded research project SERA, whose objective is to investigate the seismic performance of three-leaf masonry walls with weak lime-mortar joints. These masonry walls are widely found in seismic prone regions in the Mediterranea...

This study investigates the seismic response of archetype infilled reinforced concrete buildings representative of the existing Italian residential building stock by focusing on the modelling aspects of the existing infills, including their failure modes and interaction with the frame. The study compares the seismic response of the considered build...

This study investigates the seismic response of reinforced concrete buildings designed according to Italian regulations and construction practices for three different post-WWII periods, up to the 1990s. Additional key investigated parameters are the number of stories and the site hazard. The main issues related to non-seismic and early seismic desi...

This paper deals with the results of an experimental and numerical campaign aimed at characterizing the mechanical response of masonry components and panels made of limestone units kept together by weak air lime mortar joints. The selected air lime mortar, typical of ancient masonry buildings but difficult to be built-up artificially, was specifica...

This paper presents the comparison of the results of modal and nonlinear analyses carried out on a 2-story masonry building with rigid diaphragms, inspired by the Pizzoli’s town hall (AQ, Italy). The case study is one of the Benchmark Structures (labeled BS6) in the “ URM nonlinear modelling –Benchmark project” funded by the Italian Department of C...

This paper reports the results of different finite and discrete element simulations on a well-known benchmark of an unreinforced plane masonry structure. Namely, the case study concerns a five floor structural wall, located at the interior of a masonry building, situated in “via Martoglio” in the city of Catania (Italy). The numerical simulations a...

Following a major disaster, hospitals must promptly rearrange their organization and treatment procedures to deal with the sudden arrival of a high number of injured people to minimize morbidity and mortality. These procedural changes are included in emergency plans that hospital are required to define. Nonetheless, procedures followed in emergency...

This article compares the results obtained from the analyses of seven two-story masonry walls with an asymmetric arrangement of the openings. The walls are modelled with finite elements detailed micromodels and equivalent frame models. The equivalent frame model reliability is evaluated by comparing the results obtained with the two modelling strat...

Seismic safety assessments at the large-scale are of paramount importance for densely urbanised areas with non-negligible seismic hazard. The topic is gaining increasing interest, particularly in nations with a longstanding-built environment. Methods based on non-linear history analyses of simplified building models are increasingly relevant and po...

Seismic vulnerability assessment of buildings is a process of paramount importance for identifying those areas in a city demanding higher attention with respect to potential earthquake attacks. Methods for evaluating seismic vulnerability require a more or less accurate survey of the buildings geometrical and mechanical features, as well as of the...

European historical city centers are particularly prone to natural disasters. This is due to the fragility of structures that often times do not comply with seismic codes; the high constructions’ density that causes induced damage; and the historical relevance of buildings that makes difficult the enacting of mitigation strategies. In Italy, major...

Modelling of exposure is one of the most relevant challenges in seismic vulnerability assessments at the large scale, because of the large number of buildings to be handled whose geometrical and structural features may vary significantly. In these cases, it is convenient to identify a suite of archetype buildings that are deemed representative of t...

In this paper, a novel predictive model for the seismic vulnerability assessment of old Italian minor historical centres is presented. The proposed methodology is based on the use of eight seismic parameters, which can be easily extracted from the CARTIS form, a new tool for collecting building inventories at the regional scale, promoted by the Ita...

This paper deals with the seismic vulnerability assessment of dwellings in the historic center of Cusco (Peru), one of the most important UNESCO sites in the world. This activity is framed within a cooperation agreement between the University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy), the Andina University del Cusco (Peru) and the Cusco Municipality (Peru), and al...

Nonstructural elements and contents often constitute a large fraction of the economic invest-ment in ordinary buildings. In case of seismic events, damage to nonstructural elements not only contributes to the overall direct material costs but can also significantly impact the indi-rect costs. The latter are especially affected by earthquake-induced...

Several European countries are likely to experience extensive damage following major earthquakes due to high vulnerability and exposure, associated with the age of the built environment and the presence of densely populated areas, respectively. For these reasons, large-scale seismic risk assessment has a pivotal role. Given the large number of buil...

Urban areas with a significant number of buildings designed without earthquake resistant concepts may undergo high losses following major earthquakes. However, an adequate design is the direct result of a comprehensive knowledge of the seismic hazard. In Italy, for example, the seismic zonation was completed in recent years, thus a significant numb...

Recent earthquakes have shown that the seismic behavior of non-code conforming reinforced concrete buildings are in several cases strongly affected by the nonlinear response and possible failure of the beam-column joints. Beam column joint inelasticity is typically due to either shear cracking and failure of the central concrete panel or bond-slip...

Any design of standard structures in keeping with seismic safety norms is usually founded on an approach characterised by force-based design. Research has proven, over the course of several decades, that such an approach has a solid basis and can easily be applied by the engineers in charge of the design project. Furthermore, when taken in conjunct...

In this paper, the reconstruction process of a town affected by the 2012 Northern Italy Earthquake is analysed using information published on the town journal. Relevant aspects are highlighted, and the housing recovery is compared with that of a nearby city. Then, a what-if scenario is considered, by proposing a set of seismic mitigation strategies...

This study outlines a procedure for the seismic safety evaluation of historical buildings for engineers and architects that commonly work on buildings belonging to cultural and architectural heritage. The procedure is characterized by two interrelated phases: (a) building knowledge acquisition and (b) structural behavior analysis and safety assessm...

The seismic performance of a class of reinforced concrete eccentric wall frame buildings under bi-directional ground motion excitation is investigated. For this purpose, four and eight-storey RC buildings comprising structural walls, flat-plates and gravity columns, having different strength and stiffness eccentricity and torsional restrain, are de...

The prediction of the seismic response of structures requires accurate models for describing the behavior of each structural element. In frame analysis, non-linearities are typically modeled through either lumped or distributed plasticity elements. Another important assumption is needed for the selection of the appropriate section model. Phenomenol...

The ground motion vertical component is typically ignored in the analysis of ordinary building structures, even though damage observed in recent Emilia (Italy) earthquakes indicate that the vertical accelerations may have influenced the response of older masonry buildings. This manuscript presents a numerical study that investigates the effects of...

This paper deals with the seismic vulnerability assessment of dwellings in the historic centre of Cusco (Peru), one of the most important UNESCO sites in the world. This activity is framed within a cooperation agreement between the University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy), the Andina University del Cusco (Peru), the Pontifical Catholic University of Pe...

The overall earthquake response of Hakka Tulous, traditional earth constructions of the Fujian Province (China) and listed among the UNESCO World Heritage buildings, is investigated. Non-linear static analysis (pushover) with the equivalent frame approach is used. Although some rough approximations are assumed, this approach is well suited to model...

The RINTC research project (RINTC Workgroup, 2018), financed by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, is aimed at evaluating the seismic risk of buildings conforming to the Italian building code. Within the framework of this project, the attention has been recently focused on existing buildings, too. In this study, case-study structures, repr...

For seismic analysis of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings characterized by a box‐like behavior, a widely accepted model is based on the equivalent frame idealization of walls. The equivalent frame model uses 1D elements to represent the vertical piers and horizontal spandrels which are connected by rigid nodes. The mechanical characterization of...

Seismic vulnerability assessment of urban centers is a challenging issue that needs to be faced accurately for the earthquake risk of large territorial areas. The selection of suitable methods is a crucial aspect that must be treated according to different evaluation processes, depending on the size of the problem and on the available calculation c...

A quantitative methodology that computes the capacity of hospitals to operate on injured people in the aftermath of a seismic event is presented. The model incorporates variables such as organizational and human preparedness, damage to buildings, the number of operating theatres, the amount of supplies, and the duration of a surgical treatment. The...

A growing interest concerning the seismic risk assessment at urban scale has been observed. In Italy, recent earthquakes highlighted the vulnerability of the built environment causing severe damage and a high number of casualties. In addition, historical city centres are part of the cultural heritage and their preservation is deemed necessary. For...

p>Hakka Tulous are massive circular earth constructions of the Fujian Province, China, included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. They are subjected to earthquakes of medium magnitude, but their response to the seismic action is not yet investigated in depth. The seismic response of Fujian Tulous was herein investigated through pushover analysis m...

This study investigates the seismic response of reinforced concrete buildings designed according to the current Italian building code. Number of stories, site hazard, presence and distribution of masonry infill panels, and type of lateral resisting system are the key investigated parameters. The main issues related to design and modeling are discus...

A graphical dynamic model is presented to predict the directional earthquake response of two-ways plan-asymmetric buildings. The theoretical principles inherent to torsional dynamics and vibrations are investigated and the dynamic directional response is rationally explained based on modal rotational kinematics about modal torsional pivots. Seismic...

Over the past few decades, climate change has become a significant problem, the ramifications of which are of concern around the world. Global warming is a long-term process caused by phenomena such as increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere, increases in rainfall, changes in relative humidity and changes in tempera...

Nowadays, energy efficiency (EE) is presented as a reliable strategy towards sustainable development, but its application has not been developed equitably worldwide, since most EE policies have been implemented in industrialised nations, and developing countries are still in the process of improving their EE levels. This paper provides a contextual...

This paper presents a study on the selection of engineering demand parameters (EDPs) for the definition of collapse for code-conforming reinforced concrete buildings. The definition of collapse for buildings is not unique, as different codes and authors define it with respect to different EDPs and different values of the EDPs. Since collapse is ass...

In this article, a predictive model for the seismic vulnerability assessment of old Italian historic centers is presented through its direct application to a meaningful case study, the historic center of Scanno, in Abruzzi, Italy. The proposed method is calibrated on the basis of the observations carried out on similar historic centers hit by the 2...

The accuracy of the Equivalent Frame Method (EFM) in modelling the seismic non-linear behaviour of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is investigated for regular walls (i.e. walls with regular openings' distribution) with different pier-to-spandrel geometrical relations. The developed EFM is composed of pier and spandrel elements with spread plas...

This paper presents the comparison of the results of nonlinear static analyses performed on a simple masonry building with different computer programs that work within the Equivalent Frame Modelling approach. The activity described in this paper is part of a wider research program carried out within the ReLUIS 2014-2018 project (founded by the Ital...

The seismic ductility performance of an existing reinforced concrete building, not designed to resist earthquake loadings, can be strongly affected by local collapses of the beam-to-column joints. A premature failure of a joint region can represent a further limitation of the connected beams and columns ductility resources. Consequently, the accura...

This paper presents the comparison of the results of nonlinear static analyses performed on a simple masonry building with different computer programs that work within the Equivalent Frame Modelling approach. The activity described in this paper is part of a wider research program carried out within the ReLUIS 2014-2018 project (founded by the Ital...

Over the past decades, several scientific researches have detected that the planet's climate is changing. In recent years, the warmest years of history have been recorded as a result of greenhouse gases emissions that cause global warming (GW). Globally, it has been shown that the energy sector is one of the main contributors to the emissions and t...

The seismic response of older R/C frames can be particularly sensitive to interaction with masonry infills, poor section detailing and smooth reinforcing bars. These aspects are quite often neglected in design and assessment both with linear and nonlinear models due to the modelling complexity and inherent increase in computational effort. This wor...

Hazard maps are valuable instruments for taking decisions in disaster contexts. In order to obtain them automatically, a hazard model needs to be written using programming languages. However, before writing and running a hazard model, a software developer needs to understand important civil engineering concepts that could present some difficulties....

Strengthening and retrofitting masonry infill Reinforced Concrete (RC) frames is crucial due to the large use of this structural typology in earthquake-prone countries. Masonry infills can provide a positive and negative effect on the seismic response. A positive effect is due to the fact that the infills dissipate energy and therefore increase the...

Ao longo dos anos, a evolução da qualidade de vida do homem baseou-se principalmente na utilização de recursos naturais e na obtenção de energia. O aumento da disponibilidade de energia permitiu que os países desenvolvessem sua economia e melhorassem o nível de vida da população, mas, por sua vez, esse aumento está associado à atual exacerbação dos...

This article presents probabilistic seismic hazard analyses of northern Pakistan region carried out to produce macro-seismic hazard maps for the region that define new regional ground motion design parameters for 95-, 475-, 975- and 2475-year return period earthquakes as regional contour maps and horizontal uniform hazard at important cities. The C...

Nowadays, increasing buildings’ energy efficiency represents an opportunity to improve their thermal performance and adapting them to the global warming effects. However, finding the most suitable intervention for heritage buildings represents a challenge since the best energy retrofit solution has also to achieve the preservation of the building’s...

Floor diaphragms play several roles in the seismic response of dual systems: support vertically spanning components, transfer lateral forces to walls and frames, provide restraint to columns and walls, tie the structure together, and enable redundant load paths for lateral forces. In many buildings after events as recent as the 2010-2011 Christchur...

The maximum seismic response of torsionally coupled plan asymmetric structures can be rationally visualized and computed through a Mohr Circle Response Spectrum Analysis (MCRSA). This is done combining the graphic modal properties of the torsional dynamic equations of motion with the structural earthquake demand in terms of a displacement spectrum...

The paper presents a predictive model for assessing the seismic vulnerability of small historic centres. The model, developed in the framing of other similar methods proposed in the past, needs a limited number of parameters and is based on information collected in the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. First, a damage survey carried out on...

This paper documents and analyzes the seismic behavior of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings that were damaged by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, and reports on the performance of palaces, giving an overview on the failures suffered by significant examples of these monumental buildings. Field reconnaissance was completed through both rapid,...

Bridges are lifeline and integral components of transportation system that are susceptible to seismic actions, their vulnerability assessment is essential for seismic risk assessment and mitigation. The vulnerability assessment of bridges common in Pakistan is very important as it is seismically very active region and the available code for the sei...

The overall earthquake response of Tulous, traditional earth buildings of the Fujian Province (China) and listed among the UNESCO World Heritage buildings, is investigated through non-linear static analysis (pushover) by using the equivalent frame approach. Although this approach implies some rough approximations, it is suitable to model complex ma...