Diaphragm effectiveness of precast concrete structures with cladding panels under seismic action

Displacement-based design of precast hinged portal frames with additional dissipating devices at beam-to-column joints

“…Precast structures have been widely adopted in the industrial and commercial sectors due to their ability to cover large surfaces by means of pre-stressing, to the high-quality control of materials and elements, and to the fast erection sequence if compared to traditional reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Besides these advantages, existing buildings designed before the enforcement of modern anti-seismic building codes may show several criticalities, particularly in the Italian territory (Magliulo et al 2014a;Belleri et al 2015a;Ercolino et al 2016;Minghini et al 2016), mainly related to the lack of efficient connections between structural elements and to the displacement incompatibility between structural and non-structural elements, such as cladding panels, arising as a consequence of the high flexibility of the building typology (Belleri et al 2015b(Belleri et al , 2016(Belleri et al , 2018Dal Lago et al 2019;Scotta et al 2015). The seismic assessment and risk analysis of such structural system highlight the influence of these vulnerabilities (Belleri et al 2015b;Palanci et al 2017;Torquati et al 2018;Bosio et al 2020).…”

Assessment of the Seismic Behavior of a Precast Reinforced Concrete Industrial Building with the Presence of Horizontal Cladding Panels

“…Recent earthquakes have exposed the main vulnerabilities of PRC buildings, highlighting both structural and nonstructural damage, mostly related to the deficient transfer of horizontal loads at the connections between elements [1]. The inadequate design of these connections may have caused the cladding panels (with weights of up to 10 tons) to collapse, representing a potential risk for humans, even during evacuation procedures [3], as well as significant economic losses [4].…”

“…It was observed that the different cladding-to-structure fastenings play key roles in the safety, performance, and the economics of both the cladding system as well as the main structure itself. Several authors reported heavy damage related to cladding panels [4,[6][7][8]. In particular, Bournas et al [9] reported that approximately 75% of industrial PRC buildings designed without seismic provisions exhibited damage and detachment of the exterior cladding panels, as shown in Figure 1a.…”

“…Furthermore, it was observed in a recent survey carried out on Portuguese PRC buildings [11] that cladding panels, both in old and recent buildings, are generally not considered in the design, not even with simplified procedures, ignoring the interaction with the frame and it is considered that they do not contribute to seismic behavior. Several authors, however, have demonstrated that cladding panels can have a significant contribution to the seismic response [1,4,[12][13][14][15][16].…”

Rehabilitation of early-age precast concrete structures: a feasibility study on an industrial complex progressively built in 1940s-1970s in Northern Italy

“…Moreover, the structural performance indexes are based on the assumption that all simply supported elements by dry-friction are provided by post-inserted mechanical connections in the design stage, which is compulsory to avoid the extreme vulnerability related to possible loss of support or beam overturning [7][8][9], and that this intervention could foster the assumption of a rigid diaphragm behaviour of the roof deck [10,11].…”