A sustainable RC-framed skin for integrated seismic retrofit intervention on existing buildings: experimental and numerical characterization

This paper presents an innovative RC-framed skin for integrated and sustainable retrofit intervention of existing build-ings. A detailed description of the proposed skin technology is provided, focusing on the integrated improvement of structural (e.g. seismic) and non-structural (e.g. energy) performances as well as on the issues concerning the limitation of invasiveness and inter-ruption of use of the building. Some numerical analyses were carried out to design the experimental tests on the proposed RC-framed skin system by means of an advanced FE model implemented within the OpenSees framework. Modelling criteria, assumptions and the principal numerical results in terms of global response are presented and discussed. Experimental tests carried out on a full scale selected configuration of the proposed RC-framed skin are presented in terms of test setup, samples characteristics, cyclic loading protocol and some preliminary results are critically discussed.