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Seismic actions on structures in the near-source region of the 2016 central Italy sequence

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Abstract

The central Italy seismic sequence began in the latter half of 2016 and continued well into 2017, causing severe damage in the villages close to the source and causing hundreds of casualties. It is a sequence especially interesting to study, from the perspective of seismic actions experienced by structures, because it saw nine M ≥ 5.0 earthquakes within a period of 5 months, rupturing parts of the complex central Apennine mountain range fault system. Consequently, some of the main earthquake engineering issues that arose are the multiple locations where the code-mandated seismic actions were exceeded in more than one of the main events of the sequence and the number of pre- and low-code existing buildings that suffered heavy damage or collapse due to the intensity of individual earthquakes and the cumulative effect of repeated damaging shocks. The present article picks up on these topics and uses probabilistic seismic hazard, as well as the multitude of strong ground motion recordings available from the sequence, to provide a discussion on certain issues, that are all related to the topical subject of seismic actions. These issues are: (1) the unsurprising exceedance of code spectra in the epicentral areas of strong earthquakes; (2) the particular spectral shape and damaging potential of near-source, pulse-like, ground motions, possibly related to rupture directivity; and (3) structural non-linear behaviour in the wake of a sequence that produces repeated strong shaking without the necessary respite for repair and retrofit operations.

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Notes

  1. Ground motion data and source information about on these events can be found at http://esm.mi.ingv.it/, via the following Event ID codes: EMSC-20160824_0000006 (Amatrice M6.0), EMSC-20161026_0000095 (Ussita M5.9), EMSC-20161026_0000077 (Castelstantagelo sul Nera M5.4), EMSC-20161030_0000029 (Norcia M6.5).

  2. Although there are several recording stations outside the boundaries of the maps, none of them has exceeded the life-safety code spectrum for ordinary structures. Exceptions are the stations AQK (L’Aquila) and MMUR (Monte Murano). AQK experienced exceedances during the M6.0 and M6.5 events, being distant from the source 34 and 43 km, respectively. These exceedances are due to the unusual shape of recorded ground motions with increment of spectral ordinates in a narrow range of periods around 1.5 s, probably due to local effects that have been discussed, among others, in Monaco et al. (2009). Exceedance at MMUR occurred during the M5.9 event at 49 km distance. Exceedance is slight (i.e., recorded spectrum is 5% higher than code’s) at 0.1 s vibration period.

  3. One may argue that multiple exceedances have been observed in this sequence, yet it should be recalled that PSHA, and therefore code spectra in Italy, refers to exceedance due to mainshocks and does not explicitly account for exceedances caused by aftershocks or foreshocks to the main event.

  4. In fact, the vibration period for which PSV attains its maximum value has been used in the past as a proxy for \(T_{P}\).

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Acknowledgements

The study presented in this paper was developed within the activities of ReLUIS (Rete dei Laboratori Universitari di Ingegneria Sismica) for the project ReLUIS-DPC 2014–2018, as well as within the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 research project EXCHANGE-Risk (Grant Agreement Number 691213).

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Iervolino, I., Baltzopoulos, G., Chioccarelli, E. et al. Seismic actions on structures in the near-source region of the 2016 central Italy sequence. Bull Earthquake Eng 17, 5429–5447 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-017-0295-3

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