engleski

Assessment of Existing Masonry Structures (The ARES project)

It is well established that in Europe, masonry is one of the most commonly used materials in construc-tion due to its characteristics and construction simplicity. In addition, the majority of buildings that have any cultural and historical significance in Europe are built in masonry. Seeing that most of these mason-ry structures were built before the development of seismic regulations, many of them need to be evaluat-ed and, if needed, strengthened. Today, standards and guidelines for the assessment of existing masonry structures do exist but are not very comprehensive and require a lot of engineering subjective judgment to implement. Furthermore, the energy renovation of existing buildings is one of the most pressing matters in the construction sector today, but structural aspects are somewhat ignored and/or disregarded. Since great financial resources are intended for energy renovation throughout Europe, it seems that structural updating and strengthening can and must be an added value for the energy renovation of buildings. This specifically applies to masonry structures, which in most cases need seismic strengthen- ing. The assessment techniques focus mainly on damage identification, damage localization and damage evaluation as well as determination of certain material properties of existing structures. The diagnoses are based on the design procedures of new structures and the planning of interventions often suggests reinforcement. The current practice of the assessment of existing structures might not be considered suitable to facilitate confident decisions about the reliability of structures. The main objective of the ARES project, partially presented in this article, is to study the role of assessment on the reliability analysis of existing structures.

existing structures, earthquakes, building stock, structural assessment, rehabilitation

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