Francesca Ceroni

In-plane deformability of RC floors: assessment of the main parameters and influence on dynamic behaviour

In-plane floor deformability is an important issue for the correct assessment of the behaviour of Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures subjected to seismic loads. Several studies have demonstrated that in-plane floor deformability is often not negligible in structures with RC walls as vertical resistant elements, since it mainly depends on the relative stiffness of floor and vertical elements. In this paper, approximately 700 simple buildings constructed with RC walls were simulated in finite element models considering both two-dimensional and one-dimensional modelling strategies. First, the reliability of the simplified modelling strategy was evaluated. Then, the simplified model was used to assess the effects of building shape and number of walls on the in-plane floor deformability. The differences between the behaviour of the buildings under the assumption of deformable and rigid floors were examined in terms of both floor displacements, based on static analyses, and the main vibration periods of the building, based on linear dynamic analyses. Finally, based on the collected numerical results, reliable regression curves for both the maximum displacements and the periods evaluated under the assumption of deformable and rigid floors were obtained as function of a parameter significant of floor and walls stiffness. The curves may provide a tool for evaluating the error related to an incorrect assumption about the in-plane floor deformability.

Pull-Out Tests on Injected Anchors in Tuff Masonry Elements

In this paper the results of pull-out tests on several types of injected anchors embedded in masonry elements made of yellow tuff are described and compared. Several bonded lengths and configuration of the masonry elements were considered in the tests. In particular, pull-out tests of anchors installed in single tuff stones were carried out in order to investigate the effect of masonry block dimensions on the activation of the splitting failure. Conversely, pull-out tests of anchors installed in masonry walls made of similar tuff stones were carried out in order to simulate real applications. Finally, the experimental results were compared with literature formulations in case of splitting failure, bond interface failure and masonry cone shaped failure.