Appraising seismic vulnerability of masonry aggregates through an automated mechanical-typological approach

The paper presents an automated procedure, named META-FORMA (MEchanical-Typological Approach FOR Masonry Aggregates), to investigate the global seismic performance of masonry aggregates according to a simplified approach. The proposed procedure faces the challenge of using few mechanical and geometrical parameters of individual buildings belonging to an existing masonry aggregate as the input of a proper vulnerability algorithm based on the direct interaction between the programming software MATLAB and the structural analysis and design software POR2000. In this way, all possible combinations of the input parameters can be taken into account and a large set of numerical models is generated and analysed by nonlinear static analyses. The output of the procedure is represented by the bilinear capacity curves of the equivalent single degree of freedom models and by the values of the capacity/demand ratios. The entire approach has been firstly accurately defined and after applied on the pilot case study of the historical centre of the municipality of Foggia, Puglia, Southern Italy. The main advantage that META-FORMA offers is the possibility to generate a wide mechanical/typological-based database, which provides a direct and simplified estimate of the seismic behaviour of masonry aggregates by knowing only few parameters, being at the same time simple and time-saving. Albeit the presented procedure has only developed for building aggregates with linear configurations and composed by the same repeated structural units, META-FORMA is open to further development and modification for accounting any kind of aggregation form.