Rui Pinho

University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture

Owing to its discrete element nature, as well as computational efficiency, the Applied Element Method (AEM) has in the recent years been increasingly employed to assess the failure mechanisms, involving flexural and torsional structural behaviour, and ensuing debris distribution of collapsed structures. Its use in the detailed estimation of local r...

The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) is an initiative that originally emerged from discussions and proposals made by the Global Science Forum of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the early 2000’s. In 2009, GEM established itself as a non-profit legal entity, the GEM Foundation, and 15 years later, it continues to ope...

Experimental testing of full structural systems and their components is crucial for understanding their response to earthquakes. Since the 1960s, global interest in such testing has grown, supported by numerous national and international funding initiatives. This has resulted in valuable data that has improved understanding of structural behaviour,...

Owing to its discrete element nature, as well as computational efficiency, the Applied Element Method (AEM) has in the recent years been increasingly employed to assess the failure mechanisms and ensuing debris distribution of collapsed structures. Its use in the detailed estimation of local response parameters such as e.g. strains, curvature and d...

When new seismic hazard estimates are published it is natural to compare them to existing results for the same location. This type of comparison routinely indicates differences amongst hazard estimates obtained with the various models. The question that then arises is whether these differences are scientifically significant, given the large epistem...

To design user-centred and scientifically high-quality outreach products to inform about earthquake-related hazards and the associated risk, a close collaboration between the model developers and communication experts is needed. In this contribution, we present the communication strategy developed to support the public release of the first openly a...

Given the ambitious targets of carbon emission reduction set for the very near future, it is now expected that retrofitting operations on existing buildings aim both at reducing their operational energy consumption and at improving their seismic performance. Indeed, it is now well acknowledged that, if a sole energy efficiency upgrade is provided t...

Following the recent collapse of a cable-stayed bridge in Genoa, Italy, an interest has arisen to understand if it would have been possible for unknown localised material deterioration and/or decrease in prestress levels to introduce noticeable changes in the dynamic behaviour of RC stays. As such, in this study we start by reviewing past research...

Subsequent to a given structural collapse, forensic efforts aimed at identifying the root cause behind the observed failure are typically deployed, not only within the framework of responsibility seeking endeavours, but also, and perhaps more importantly, with the objective of drawing lessons that will hopefully prevent a repetition of a similar ru...

To design user-centred and scientifically high-quality outreach products to inform about earthquake-related hazards and the associated risk, a close collaboration between the model developers and communication experts is needed. In this contribution, we present the communication strategy developed to support the public release of the first openly a...

Many existing bridges now have a life of more than 50 years and the recently occurred failures underline the need for many of these structures to be assessed and, if required, retrofitted, in order to avoid catastrophic collapses. The Applied Element Method is herein used to show as advanced numerical modelling that accounts for as-built structural...

There is an ever-growing societal pressure for the development and implementa-tion of earthquake risk mitigation solutions that not only minimize economic, environmental, andsocial losses due to seismic hazard during the building operational phase, but which also limit theenvironmental impact associated to the construction and other life cycle stag...

When new seismic hazard models are published it is natural to compare them to existing models for the same location. This type of comparison routinely indicates differences between the assessed hazards in the various models. The question that then arises is whether these differences are scientifically significant, given the large epistemic uncertai...

Even if not explicitly considered in most structural design codes, nor studied in-depth in past literature, reports from all over the world seem to indicate that accidental dropping of large heavy objects from transportation trucks can occur. The impact of such heavy objects onto the deck of a bridge can potentially give rise to the development of...

The Viaduct over the Polcevera River, designed by Riccardo Morandi, was a very strategic and important bridge, built in Genoa (Italy) in the mid-60s. In addition to being a renowned engineering work, due to a very innovative design at that period, the bridge was also considered as one of the symbols of the city. On the 14th of August 2018, however,...

Given the current climate emergency and the ambitious targets of carbon emissions reduction worldwide, retrofitting strategies on existing buildings are typically aimed at reducing their energy demand, decarbonizing the power supply, and addressing embodied carbon stored in construction materials. However, the contribution of potential earthquake-i...

A comprehensive database that has been used to develop ground motion models for induced earthquakes in the Groningen gas field is provided in a freely accessible online repository. The database includes more than 8500 processed ground motion recordings from 87 earthquakes of local magnitude M L between 1.8 and 3.6, obtained from a large network of...

Damage to devices installed in electric substations, which have shown vulnerable behaviour under strong earthquakes in the last decades, may endanger power delivery in the emergency phases during and after an earthquake. Within seismic risk assessment of power networks, the definition of the fragility functions of electric equipment is paramount. H...

A comprehensive database that has been used to develop ground-motion models for induced earthquakes in the Groningen gas field is provided. The database includes more than 8,500 processed ground-motion recordings from 87 earthquakes of local magnitude ML between 1.8 and 3.6, obtained from a large network of surface accelerographs and borehole geop...

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of sustainable retrofitting of existing buildings for achieving climatic and energy objectives in the EU. The energy consumed in buildings, and in general, in the construction sector, is one of the most significant sources of CO2 emissions in Europe. In specific areas, when planning retrofit interv...

Although distributed plasticity beam elements include formulations that verify a strict equilibrium of the axial forces along the element length, known as force-based (FB) approaches, the classical conventional displacement-based (DB) elements show advantages in simulating the response of some structural members. However, the latter do not verify s...

Damage to devices installed in electric substations, which have shown vulnerable behaviour under strong earthquakes in the last decades, may endanger power delivery in the emergency phases during and after an earthquake. This paper describes the shake table tests executed on two voltage transformers and two current transformers, operating at differ...

Given the current climate emergency, retrofitting activities on existing buildings should play a pivotal role towards the achievement of the envisaged ambitious targets of carbon emissions reduction worldwide. Most retrofitting strategies on buildings are intended to reduce energy demands and decarbonise the power supply, whilst often the impacts o...

The interstory drift‐based scaling procedure (IDS) developed recently by the authors for plane frames under single component horizontal ground motions, has been extended to three‐dimensional structures possessing torsional coupling under bi‐axial ground motions which are represented by their geometric mean spectrum. The ground motion‐scaling factor...

This work presents the results of a numerical investigation on the effect of light timber retrofit systems on the global response of URM cavity-wall buildings. The building object of the study is a two-storey cavity-wall terraced house, retrofitted with OSB panels and timber frames. The Applied Element Method, was chosen for the numerical analyses....

Given the current climate emergency and the ambitious targets of carbon emissions reduction, retrofitting strategies on existing buildings typically include reducing energy demand, decarbonising the power supply, and addressing embodied carbon stored in materials. This latter point redefines the role of engineers in the transitions towards a sustai...

The decarbonization of the construction sector, which is one of the most impactful sectors worldwide, requires a significant paradigm shift from a linear economy to a circular, future-proofed and sustainable economy. In this transition, the role of designers and structural engineers becomes pivotal, and new design objectives and principles inspired...

A relevant portion of the bridge over the Polcevera river in Genoa, widely known as the Morandi bridge, collapsed suddenly in August 2018, causing 43 casualties. While most initial forensic studies indicated that a cable-stay failure likely triggered the bridge collapse, only preliminary modelling of the ensuing flexural–torsional-shear failure of...

In dynamic soil-structure interaction problems, involving the coupling of structure, foundation and soil, the use of a nonlinear macro-element modelling approach may result particularly advantageous not only to consider nonlinear effects and thus avoid the introduction of possible bias in seismic risk assessment analyses, especially when ground mot...

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of sustainable retrofitting of existing buildings for achieving climatic and energy objectives in the EU. The energy consumed in buildings, and in general, in the construction sector, is one of the most significant sources of CO2 emissions in Europe. In specific areas, when planning retrofit interv...

On April 2020, the 260 m-long reinforced concrete (RC) arch bridge of Caprigliola (Massa and Carrara, Italy) suddenly collapsed into the Magra river. In this work, aimed at investigating potential reasons behind the observed failure, a numerical study is conducted using the Applied Element Method (AEM), which allows the explicitly modelling of dama...

In order to inform decision-making regarding measures to mitigate the impact of induced seismicity in the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands, a comprehensive seismic risk model has been developed. Starting with gas production scenarios and the consequent reservoir compaction, the model generates synthetic earthquake catalogues which are deploye...

Recent technological advances have enabled earthquake engineering researchers to develop numerical models of increasing complexity, capable of duly reproducing even the smallest structural detail. In the case of unreinforced masonry (URM) structures, however, because of their discrete and heterogeneous nature, computational performance tends to dec...

A life cycle framework for an integrated classification scheme for buildings based on economic and environmental impacts and the identification of optimal retrofitting solutions aimed at improving both seismic and energy performances and limiting those impacts is presented through a parametric application on a reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildin...

A majority of the residential building stock in Groningen (The Netherlands), which has been lately exposed to low intensity ground motions due to gas extraction, consists of unreinforced masonry (URM) structures not originally designed to withstand earthquakes. Amongst them, the terraced house building typology proved to be particularly vulnerable...

The Groningen region of the Netherlands, historically not prone to tectonic ground motions, in the last decades was subjected to seismic events induced by conventional gas extraction and consequent reservoir depletion, for which reason an extensive seismic risk assessment study was deployed. The peculiarity of the input ground motions, the distinct...

Soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects are typically neglected for relatively lightweight buildings that are less than two-three storeys high with a limited footprint area and resting on shallow foundations (i.e., not featuring a basement). However, when the above conditions are not satisfied, and in particular when large basements are present, i...

Buildings are among the major contributors to environmental impacts, in terms of non-renewable resource depletion, energy and material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For this reason, modern societies are pushing towards the refurbishment of existing buildings aiming at the reduction of their operational energy consumption and at a...

A novel amplitude scaling procedure is proposed in this study where the ground motion scaling factors are defined as the ratio of interstory drift distributions under target spectrum versus under the associated ground motion spectrum. The advantage of employing interstory drift ratio in ground motion scaling, compared to employing spectral intensit...

A life cycle framework for a new integrated classification system for buildings and the identification of renovation strategies that lead to an optimal balance between reduction of seismic vulnerability and increase of energy efficiency, considering both economic losses and environmental impacts, is discussed through a parametric application to an...

Ground motion scaling

Recent technological advancement has enabled earthquake engineering researchers to develop numerical models of increasing complexity, capable of duly reproducing even the smallest structural detail. In the case of masonry structures, however, because of their discrete and heterogeneous nature, computational performance tends to decrease exponential...

The collapse of a relevant portion of the Polcevera river viaduct, located in Genoa (Italy) and also known as Morandi Bridge, is herein object of a numerical investigation. The bridge was designed in the early 1960s by Riccardo Morandi, a well-known Italian engineer, and opened to the public in 1967. The collapsed part of the bridge essentially com...

Hydraulic fracturing of the first shale gas well at Preston New Road (PNR), Blackpool, United Kingdom, in late 2018, marked the end of a 7 yr United Kingdom-wide moratorium on fracking. Despite a strict traffic-light system being in place, seismic events up to ML 2.9 were induced. The ML 2.9 event was accompanied by reports of damage and was assign...

Unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings with cavity walls, typically constituted by the assembly of a loadbearing inner leaf weakly coupled to an outer veneer with no structural functions, are widely present in a number of regions exposed to tectonic or induced seismicity, including the Groningen province (The Netherlands), which has lately experience...

The existing building stock is responsible for non-renewable resource depletion, energy and material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Life cycle analysis (LCA) procedures have thus been developed recently to quantify the environmental impact of construction and operational phases over the entire le. Furthermore, the economic, enviro...

It is typically assumed that accelerograms obtained from ground motion recording instruments adequately installed inside a building can be considered as representative of free-field conditions if the structure is less than 2-3 storeys high and does not feature a basement or a massive foundation system. In this work, such an assumption is verified t...

Link to video: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0267726120311374-mmc1.mp4

In the case of seismic assessment or design of special structures such as bridges and high-rise buildings, it is crucial to employ Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis (NDA) due to important role played by higher modes of vibration. However, the issue of selection of input ground-motions for NDA and of adjusting them to ensure the quality and reliability of...

It is well-known that the existing building stock is responsible for non-renewable resource depletion, energy and material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Life cycle analysis (LCA) procedures have thus been developed, in recent years, to assess the environmental impact of construction and operational phases through the entire build...

Recent earthquake occurrence in the northern Netherlands has been attributed to gas production activity in the Groningen field. The largest earthquake to date has been the Huizinge event of August 2012 with a magnitude Mw 3.53. In response to this induced seismicity, the operators of the field have been developing a comprehensive seismic hazard and...

The effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) on the seismic response of a typical viaduct with extended pile-column foundations is investigated in this work, through the use of a nonlinear pile-head macro-element that considers both the elastic and the nonlinear response of the soil-foundation system, as well as the energy dissipation through rad...

The terraced house building typology, which typically consists of low-rise unreinforced masonry (URM) constructions with cavity walls, rigid floor diaphragms and timber roof, is largely widespread in the Groningen region (The Netherlands), now exposed to low-intensity ground motions due to gas extraction. Recent experimental evidence has shown that...

The impact of adopting different dynamic soil–structure interaction (SSI) models on the assessment of seismic fragility functions for buildings with pile foundations is studied herein. Given the importance on seismic response of the coupling of structure, foundation and soil, and the challenges posed on modelling dynamic SSI, especially when soil n...

An innovative discontinuum-based micro-modeling approach, the Applied Element Method, is used in this work to investigate explicitly potential failure mechanisms that might have contributed to the collapse of the Morandi bridge (Genoa, Italy), occurred on 14 August 2018. While, consistently with the findings presented in a previous contribution by...

The seismic performance of existing unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is considerably affected by typology and level of effectiveness of both construction details and structural components, especially if not originally designed for resisting earthquakes. Within this framework, the use of advanced numerical approaches that are capable of duly acc...

Structural failure of existing unreinforced masonry buildings, when subjected to earthquake loading, is often caused by the out-of-plane response of masonry walls. Their out-of-plane resistance could vary considerably depending on several factors, such as boundary conditions, vertical overburden and construction technique. Amongst the latter, the c...

Dynamic Soil–Structure Interaction (SSI), involving the coupling of structure, foundation and soil, is a crucial and challenging problem, especially when soil nonlinearity plays an important role. This paper shows the impact of adopting different SSI models on the assessment of seismic fragility functions. The linear substructure approach is initia...

Il viadotto sul Polcevera, progettato da Riccardo Morandi, è stato un ponte molto importante e strategico, costruito a Genova all’inizio degli anni 60. Oltre ad essere stata una famosa opera sotto l’aspetto ingegneristico è considerato anche come una vera e propria opera d’arte, nonché uno dei simboli della città. Il viadotto è stato realizzato per...

Several strong-motion networks have been installed in the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands to record ground motions associated with induced earthquakes. There are now more than 450 permanent surface accelerographs plus a mobile array of 450 instruments, which, in addition to many instrumented boreholes, yield a wealth of data. The database of...

Precast wall-slab-wall buildings can be found in many different earthquake-prone areas of the world. This type of building structure features no beams or columns but rather precast walls and slabs alone that are joined together by means of steel connectors and mortar, both of which will not necessarily prevent the formation of relative sliding betw...

Felt material is sometimes employed in precast wall‐slab‐wall structures featuring no mechanical devices for the wall‐slab connection. This implies that the frictional properties of these felts should be high enough to permit horizontal lateral forces on a building to be carried through them, preventing the sliding of slabs on precast walls and eve...

Concrete balanced-system bridges have recently become an object of interest, especially after the collapse of the Polcevera viaduct (Genoa, Italy), also known as "Morandi bridge", occurred on August 2018 due to currently unknown reasons. Given that several other structures of this type have been erected in earthquake-prone areas, this work focuses...

The terraced house building typology, which typically consists of low-rise unreinforced masonry (URM) constructions with cavity-walls, rigid floor diaphragms and timber roof, is largely widespread in a number of countries exposed to tectonic or induced seismicity. Experimental evidence has shown that the lack of seismic details, as well as the pres...

Explicit collapse analysis of bridges still represents an open challenge in numerical modeling. In this work, an innovative micro-modeling approach, the Applied Element Method, is used to investigate potential triggering factors that might have contributed to the collapse of the Morandi bridge (Genoa, Italy) that occurred on August 2018. To this en...

Natural gas production in the Groningen field in the Netherlands is causing induced earthquakes that have raised concerns regarding the safety of the local population given that the exposed building stock (which is predominantly unreinforced masonry residential housing) has not been designed and constructed considering seismic loading. Significant...

The seismic assessment of typical unreinforced masonry buildings in The Netherlands, recently exposed to low-intensity ground motions induced by gas extraction, is becoming the focus of both experimental and numerical research. Their design, originally not conceived for earthquake-resistance, often features the presence of both large openings and f...

Dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI), involving the coupling of structure, foundation and soil, is a crucial and challenging problem, especially when soil nonlinearity plays an important role. This paper shows the impact of adopting different SSI models on the assessment of seismic fragility functions. The substructure approach is initially ado...

Structural design of unreinforced masonry buildings in The Netherlands, recently exposed to low-intensity ground motions induced by gas extraction, was not originally conceived for earthquake-resistance. Indeed, the presence of both large openings and flexible diaphragms, and the lack of any specific seismic consideration or detailing significantly...

Wall‐slab‐wall buildings, in precast configuration or not, are relatively widespread in many European and non‐European countries, independently of the level and nature of seismic hazard to which the country is prone. Thus, this building archetype, featuring no columns or beams, but only slabs and walls, can be equally found both in areas characteri...