Metal Shear Panels for Seismic Upgrading of RC Buildings: A Case Study

In order to prove the possibility to adopt effectively metal shear panels for practical applications and to define specific design methodology, a case study, related to the retrofitting of the hospital building of Scafati in Campania, is presented in this paper. Based on the results of previous full-scale tests on a real r.c. frame reinforced with pure aluminium shear panels, a design procedure has been implemented in order to define the optimal configuration of shear panels to be applied to improve the seismic performance of the building under consideration. Then, a parametrical study by means of dynamic analyses under different historical records has been developed taking into account different hypotheses of modeling for the RC structure. The obtained results allows to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system, which is able to increase significantly the seismic performance of existing structure. In addition, the outcomes of the study provide interesting indications for design applications.