SEISMIC RETROFIT OF AN INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE THROUGH AN INNOVATIVE SELF-CENTERING HYSTERETIC DAMPER: MODELLING, ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION

Recent earthquakes, as the one that hit Fukushima in Japan in 2011 or the one that produced extensive damage in Turkish petrochemical facilities during the Kocaeli earthquake of 1999 or, more recently, the seismic events in May 2012 in Emilia (Italy), highlighted the increasing need of providing adequate protection to industrial installations. Industrial facilities often store a large amount of hazardous material and, in case of seismic event, there is a high probability that accidental scenarios as fire, explosion, toxic or radioactive dispersion may occur. In these cases, the ensuing disaster certainly harms the people working in the installation and it may endanger the population living in the neighborhood or in the urban area where the industrial installation is located. The consequences of such accidental scenarios can be disastrous in terms of casualties, economic losses and environmental damage. Within this work, the seismic behavior of an industrial structure is studied through several Incremental Dynamic Analyses, IDA, and particular attention is given to the selection of suitable performance criteria and the modelling of non linear phenomena (II order effects, buckling, mechanical non-linearity, etc.). The seismic behavior is then enhanced applying to the structure an innovative typology of self-centering hysteretic damper, whose mechanical characteristics are optimized through the execution of IDAs on the retrofitted structures. A final comparison between the seismic behavior of the original structure and of the retrofitted one highlights the advantages of the innovative self-centering hysteretic dampers.