Issue 51

F. Clementi et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 51 (2020) 313-335; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.51.24 313 Focussed on Fracture and Damage Detection in Masonry Structures Crumbling of Amatrice clock tower during 2016 Central Italy seismic sequence: Advanced numerical insights Francesco Clementi Dep. of Civil and Building Engineering, and Architecture, Università Politecnica della Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131, Ancona, Italy francesco.clementi@univpm.com , http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9705-777X Gabriele Milani Dep. of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, P. Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano, Italy gabriele.milani@polimi.it, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5462-3420 Angela Ferrante Dep. of Civil and Building Engineering, and Architecture, Università Politecnica della Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131, Ancona, Italy a.ferrante@pm.univpm.it Marco Valente Dep. of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano, Italy marco.valente@polimi.it Stefano Lenci Dep. of Civil and Building Engineering, and Architecture, Università Politecnica della Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131, Ancona, Italy s.lenci@univpm.it, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3154-7896 A BSTRACT . The dynamic behaviour and the seismic vulnerability of the ancient civic clock tower of Amatrice, dramatically damaged by the last shocks sequence of 2016 that occurred in Central Italy, is studied in this paper by means of advanced 3D numerical analyses with the Non-Smooth Contact Dynamics Method (NSCD). Thus, a discontinuous approach was used to assess the dynamic properties and the vulnerability of the masonry structure, through large displacements regulated by the Signorini’s law, concerning the impenetrability between the rigid bodies, and by the Coulomb’s law, regarding the dry-friction model. Afterward, different values were assigned to the friction coefficient of the models and real seismic shocks were then applied in nonlinear analyses. The major purpose of this study is to highlight that relevant data on the real structural behaviour of historical masonry may provided through advanced numerical analyses. The comparison between the results of numerical simulation and survey of the existing crack pattern of the bell tower Citation: Clementi, F., Milani, G., Ferrante, A., Valente, M., Lenci, S., Crumbling of Amatrice clock tower during 2016 Central Italy seismic sequence: Advanced numerical insights, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 51 (2020) 313-335. Received: 15.06.2019 Accepted: 04.11.2019 Published: 01.01.2020 Copyright: © 2020 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.