Experimental seismic behaviour of a precast industrial building at the Civil Protection Centre in Foligno, Italy

Starting from the bad experience of the May 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake, Italy, ENEA and Umbria Region, included also an industrial building among the instrumented structures in the framework of a large research project for the monitoring of the new Civil Protection Centre in Foligno, Italy. The building is about 60x60 m and has the main structure composed of four frames, with five columns and precast beams. The fixed instrumentation, composed of 12 accelerometers connected to an acquisition system, was limited to a single intermediate frame. The accelerometer network was first tested by using a seismometer network for ambient vibration recordings, which also allowed performing the dynamic characterization of the structure. Then several seismic events were recorded and classified on the basis of the input energy at the foot of the structure. Data analyses pointed out changes in the resonance frequencies of the building during each event, probably due to non-linear effects related to the connections between beams and columns and to the contribution of non-structural elements.