Energy and Seismic Rehabilitation of RC Buildings through an Integrated Approach: An Application Case Study

Abstract

The high number of existing buildings in Italy without adequate seismic and thermal performances requires the definition of integrated retrofitting techniques in order to improve the seismic performance and to reduce energy losses at the same time. On one hand, an integrated approach appears mandatory considering that improving only the energy efficiency of nonseismic buildings leads to an increase of their exposure and, therefore, of their risk in the case of seismic events. On the other hand, seismic strengthening without an adequate thermal assessment and rehabilitation could compromise living comfort and energy maintenance costs. In this context, an application of integrated approach for the rehabilitation of reinforced concrete (RC) existing buildings has been proposed referring to a case study representative of the Italian building stock. Different configurations of infill panels have been considered in order to analyze both energy and seismic performance. Monthly quasi-steady state and hourly dynamic models have been used for the calculation of the energy need of buildings located in different Italian climate and seismic zones. Seismic performances have been evaluated by means of incremental nonlinear dynamic analysis (IDA). As-built and post-retrofit performances have been compared in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed intervention solutions.

Energetic and Structural Retrofit of Existing RC Buildings through Precast Concrete Panels: Proposal of a New Technology and Explorative Performance Simulation

“…In recent years, some researchers have investigated retrofit methodologies accounting for the coupling of seismic and energetic vulnerabilities, proposing different techniques through a unique intervention (Bournas, 2018;Fumo et al, 2018). Interesting solutions regard the use of a double-skin (Manfredi and Masi, 2018), the use of an exoskeleton (Marini et al, 2017;D'angola et al, 2019) and the use of new and innovative materials (Manfredi and Masi, 2018;Artino et al, 2019). In general, new policies are strongly necessary to figure out this issue (e.g., Pohoryles et al, 2020) and to this noble scope, a possible solution developed during the last twenty years, is the use of prefabricated modules.…”