Preliminary Ranges of Critical Vertical Settlements of Italian Masonry Building Stock for SHM Applications

Structural health monitoring plays a crucial role in ensuring the safety and reliability of masonry structures, by providing continuous and real-time monitoring of their structural behavior and identifying any potential issues or anomalies before they become critical. The measurement of vertical displacements (by means of mechanical gauges, optical instruments or even satellite-based interferometry) in masonry structures due to settlements provide useful information for the assessment of the vulnerability of existing masonry buildings. This paper aims to define a preliminary range of critical vertical displacements that activate in-plane local damages in masonry walls in terms of flexural and shear failure, for monitorability. In particular, flexural, diagonal shear and sliding local mechanisms are analyzed in this paper. Large scale analyses have been performed assuming simplified models where materials, loads and geometrical information of masonry structures are based on main Italian databases. Building models are generated by means of Monte Carlo analyses in order to simulate the behavior of Italian masonry buildings. The analysis results allow to provide preliminary fragility curves based on maximum likelihood estimation method.