Novel concepts for green, safe and cost-effective renovation of EU buildings

notice - eub

Research Activities

The research activities comprise experiments on full-scale prototype reinforced concrete buildings to validate the efficiency of the advanced retrofitting solutions and to provide data for developing and calibrating numerical models. Specifically, the building is submitted to a sequence of earthquake simulations of increasing intensity up to conditions of significant damage, using a real ground motion recording from the 2016 Central Italy earthquake. Airtightness tests (i.e., blower door tests) are carried out between earthquake simulations to estimate the evolution of air infiltration with increasing structural damage. Both building prototypes, retrofitted with textile composites and CLT panels, demonstrated the ability to withstand an earthquake of approximately double the intensity compared to the earthquake that caused significant damage to the unretrofitted building. Furthermore, the thermal performance of both retrofitted buildings did not deteriorate up to the design-level earthquake.

Until recently, the renovation of existing buildings focused either on solving structural safety problems or improving energy performance. Now, we need to investigate potential benefits from integrating energy efficiency upgrades with seismic strengthening measures with a single intervention.
Dionysios BOURNAS
Project Leader of iRESIST+ and NOTICE-EUB