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Masonry towers are peculiar structures with complex structural behavior despite biased conclusions deriving from their geometrical regularity and simplicity. Their geometrical features and the epistemic uncertainty that masonry material bears strongly influence their static and seismic behavior. This paper investigates a remarkable and representative case study. The bell tower of Portogruaro (Italy) is a 57 m high tall construction, built in the XII-th century, and has a notable inclination. The Italian Guideline for the safety assessment of masonry towers is a key focus in this paper, highlighting the pros and cons of different suggested approaches. Some relevant proposals are presented in this paper in order to address the seismic safety assessment of masonry bell towers. The findings show that very slender structures do not meet the guidelines recommendations due to limitations in their current stress state. In addition, in similar cases, the recommended values for the mechanical properties of masonry material led to predicting non-withstanding structural behavior, questioning the correct choice of the adapted material properties. Advanced pushover analysis has been conducted in order to investigate the results of the simplified approach in terms of failure patterns and seismic safety estimation. The simulations are implemented for four different hypothetical scenarios of the existing masonry mechanical properties. The results obtained for the case study tower reflect a different perspective in the seismic assessment of masonry towers when specific approaches are defined. The preliminary results on the safety of Portogruaro Tower show a significant variability of seismic safety based on the adopted scenario, highlighting the necessity to pay attention to the preservation state of the present case and of similar ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three inclined historical masonry towers, located in the city of Ferrara (North-East region of Italy), are analyzed under seismic loads employing advanced numerical models. This study provides a critical review on the conservation state, present vulnerabilities, influence of peculiar structural features, and future need for strengthening interventions. Three scenarios were performed, mimicking the seismic severity of earthquakes for three different return periods: 50y, 200y, and 500y. The mechanical properties adopted for the models were extracted by tuning the dynamic response of the models with ambient vibrations test results. A concrete damage plasticity material, with a simplified multilinear softening in both tension and compression, is here adopted. Three parameters are investigated for an insight into the seismic performance estimation: (i) the damage pattern, (ii) the dissipated plastic energy, and (iii) the top displacement. Nonlinear dynamics simulations show the dissemination of structural damages for relatively low magnitude of ground acceleration, where clear failure mechanisms are prone to be activated. The present case studies exhibit unsymmetrical failure mechanisms due to the geometrical features, favoring the crack propagation in in-tension sidewalls, or stability loss of compressed walls. From a preliminary estimation of their seismic vulnerability, it is deduced that a relatively high risk is still present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Permeability of concrete is regarded as a basic indicator of its durability. This paper proposed a simple model to predict the permeability of engineered cementitious composites (ECC), which are fiber reinforced cementitious composites with extremely high ductility and toughness. The permeability of cement paste in ECC was firstly determined based on the general effective media theory. The needed microstructure information of cement paste was obtained from a simulated microstructure. Porosity of the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) was obtained with an ITZ porosity model, and then used to calculate the permeability of ITZ. The permeability of the matrix was determined according to the general self-consistent scheme, and the influence of fiber was simplified with its volume fraction. The calculated permeability of ECC was verified with results from water permeability tests and the accuracy of the model was acceptable for cement-based materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning techniques have become a popular solution to prediction problems. These approaches show excellent performance without being explicitly programmed. In this paper, 448 sets of data were collected to predict the neutralization depth of concrete bridges in China. Random forest was used for parameter selection. Besides this, four machine learning methods, such as support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN) and XGBoost, were adopted to develop models. The results show that machine learning models obtain a high accuracy (>80%) and an acceptable macro recall rate (>80%) even with only four parameters. For SVM models, the radial basis function has a better performance than other kernel functions. The radial basis kernel SVM method has the highest verification accuracy (91%) and the highest macro recall rate (86%). Besides this, the preference of different methods is revealed in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, the possibility to use the inelastic capacities of structures have driven the seismic design philosophy to conceive structures with ductile elements, able to obtain large deformations without compromising structural safety. In particular, the utilization of high-strength elements combined with the purpose of reducing inertial masses of the construction has highlighted the second-order effect as a result of the "lightweight" structure's flexibility. Computational aspects of inclusion of the second-order effects in the structural analysis remain an open issue and the most common method in the current design practices uses the stability coefficient θ The stability coefficient estimates the ratio between the second-order effect and lateral loads' effects. This coefficient is used then to amplify the lateral loads' effects in order to consider the second-order effects, within a certain range proposed by codes of practices. In the present paper, we propose a simple approach, as an alternative to the stability coefficient method, in order to take into consideration P-Delta effects for earthquake-resisting ductile frame structures in the design process. The expected plastic deformations, which can be assessed by the behavior factor and the elastic deformations of the structure, are expected to magnify the P-Delta effects compared to those estimated from an elastic approach. The real internal forces are approximated by modifying the stiffness matrix of the structure in such a way as to provide a compatible amplification effect. This concept is herein implemented with a three-step procedure and illustrated with well-documented case studies from the current literature. The obtained results show that the method, although simple, provides a good approximation compared to more refined and computationally expensive methods. The proposed method seems promising for facilitating the design computations and increasing the accuracy of the internal forces considering the second-order effects and the amplification from the inelastic deformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]