Seismic Assessment and Retrofitting of a Masonry Clustered Building in the Sanità District of Naples

This work presents a case study on the seismic evaluation and restoration design of a clustered masonry building by exploiting the Italian government incentives provided with the "Sismabonus" law, which allows money to be saved when performing seismic interventions for the retrofitting of existing constructions. The case study building is a clustered construction inside the Borgo dei Vergini, placed in the Sanità district of the city of Naples. The main objective of this work is to examine a simplified modelling approach of the whole cluster or agglomeration of buildings to foresee in a reliable way its seismic behaviour. In the first part, an historical analysis and geometrical survey of the agglomerated buildings are carried out in order to obtain information about architectural aspects, materials, construction techniques and signs of degradation. After the first full scale FEM model of the entire clustered building was set up, different simplified models were implemented in order to reproduce as best as possible the seismic behaviour of the different structural units of the whole. In the final analysis phase, some interventions are designed and examined from the structural, architectural and environmental points of view aiming at achieving a satisfactory seismic and environmental retrofit of the building. Finally, a cost-to-benefit analysis is performed to evaluate to what extent the government incentives could be exploited. In conclusion, the beneficial effects of these structural interventions on the seismic behaviour are summarised.