Seismic Vulnerability and Fragility of Existing Italian Industrial Steel Buildings

Introduction: The recent L’Aquila (2009) and Emilia-Romagna (2012) Italian earthquakes have highlighted the vulnerability of recently erected buildings, with particular reference to industrial ones. Although steel buildings have usually demonstrated a good behaviour under earthquakes, with limited damages and rare cases of collapse, they still represent a structural typology at risk due to the significant exposure connected to the importance of the resources they host. Methods: In the paper a parametric study on several industrial steel buildings, different for typology, geometrical dimensions, seismic zones and snow geographic areas, has been done through pushover analyses. Results and Conclusion: The results have allowed to plot vulnerability curves, which have been compared to seismic fragility curves derived from literature observational studies. The comparison among curves has allowed to estimate the effectiveness of the literature fragility studies, as well as to evaluate the seismic damages suffered by investigated structures under dissimilar grade earthquakes.