Seismic rehabilitation of historical masonry buildings

Masonry buildings frequently present unsatisfactory behavior under seismic activity, due to the poor resistance of the masonry walls to tensile stresses and to the presence of flexible wooden floors. This paper presents a comparative study of the performance of different seismic retrofitting techniques, implemented in a model of an existing masonry building. The first part of the study considers the testing of different methodologies to strengthen the building floors, to enable them to behave as stiff diaphragms. In the second stage, the seismic protection of the building is studied with these different solutions: insertion of concrete walls, the use of a base isolation solution, and the implementation of viscous dampers. A particular analysis is made on the use of viscous dampers since it improves the seismic behavior with little interference.