We are currently involved, in partnership with the Dutch firm EconStruct, in a large campaign aimed at the investigation of the seismic vulnerability and design of retrofit interventions of a large number of existing structures located in the Groningen region, The Netherlands, subjected to seismicity induced by gas extraction on onshore fields.
This project, which started in January 2018, has so far entailed the seismic assessment of more than 140 existing buildings. Most structures under investigation are residential buildings realised with unreinforced masonry material. However, some structures have historical and architectural value and a number of structures are realised with different types of material such as cast in-situ or precast reinforced concrete, steel and timber.
In the framework on this project, we provide our deep knowledge in the field of seismic engineering and in details it is mandated with the following tasks:
- Analysis of the existing structures and investigation of their weak points in terms of both static and dynamic/seismic behaviour;
- Generation of finite element models for the seismic assessment of the structures under investigation. The assessment can be realised following different methodologies depending on the type of structure and it is performed following both the Dutch guidelines for seismic analysis of structures, NPR9998, and the Eurocodes;
- Whenever the structures do not comply with the code based verifications Sismica360 realises the calculation of retrofit interventions and it produces the structural drawings for the realization of the latter.