Abstract. In Italy infills and partitions (non-structural elements) are typically made up of hollow brick masonry, disposed in one or two parallel vertical walls. Many studies have analysed their role on the seismic behaviour of moment resisting framed RC buildings and many seismic codes, all over the world, have provided specific additional measures for them. \ud During the Abruzzo seismic sequence, non-structural damage in RC buildings, both private and public, was extensive, varying from small cracks to collapse, along with minor or no damage to structural elements. This damage involved a number of buildings, both old and recently completed, determining heavy socio-economic consequences, including human casualties, loss of building functionality (particularly important in case of strategic constructions), and unusable buildings. In this paper a review of the most frequent damage patterns is performed, aimed at identifying the main causes of damage and linking them to commonly adopted construction rules. For this purpose, local and global structural configurations frequently exhibiting non-structural damage are described, aside from out-of-plane and in-plane failures. Furthermore, a review of code provisions on non structural elements has been performed in the paper making reference to the most prominent current seismic codes and, finally, some design and construction rules are suggested

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Abstract:In Italy, most of the residential buildings (77%) were constructed before 1981, when only 25% of the national territory was classified as seismic. Further, the first provisions addressing thermal performance criteria were introduced in 1991, when about 88% of the existing Italian buildings had already been realized. Therefore, the Italian building stock is characterized by a large deficit in terms of both seismic capacity and thermal insulation. The large number of buildings having inadequate performance, both seismic and thermal, calls for rehabilitation interventions that are based on an integrated and sustainability-oriented approach. In the paper, the influence on seismic performance deriving from some retrofitting techniques, generally adopted to enhance the thermal performance of infill walls, has been evaluated. A common residential RC building representative of existing buildings designed only for vertical loads has been studied. The seismic performances have been evaluated through Incremental Dynamic Analyses (IDA). A first comparison is related to a thermal retrofitting intervention made by replacing the existing masonry infill walls with new elements that are able to ensure an adequate thermal protection. Further, a retrofitting intervention based on the "double skin" technique, where new infilled RC frames are added and connected to the existing ones, has been investigated in terms of seismic and thermal performance.

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