Incremental Dynamic and Nonlinear Static Analyses for

Seismic Assessment of Medieval Masonry Towers

Antonino Maria Marra 1; Luca Salvatori 2; Paolo Spinelli 3; and Gianni Bartoli 4
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Abstract: Discrete rigid blocks interacting through nonlinear elastic damageable interfaces are used to model the global behavior of a
medieval masonry tower under seismic actions. The seismic vulnerability assessment is carried out by nonlinear static analysis (NSA)
and incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), whose results are compared. It is confirmed that NSA results with both triangular and uniform
load distributions are safety preserving and could be adopted for design scopes. In addition, the nondimensional horizontal-displacement
threshold of 0.6% proposed by some building codes for existing masonry structures is aligned with NSA results and underestimates the
capacity of the structure obtained by IDA. A comparison in terms of fragility curves highlights that NSA accounting for material uncertainties
and IDA with record-to-record variability provide comparable levels of dispersion. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943-5509.0001022. © 2017
American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Masonry towers; Seismic assessment; Nonlinear static analysis; Incremental dynamic analysis; Record-to-record
variability; Material uncertainties.

Introduction
Medieval towers are a recurring monumental typology in European
sites. As do other structures belonging to cultural heritage, they
represent an important component of individual and collective
identity as well as significant tourist attractions on which many
communities depend. The greatest dangers faced by these artifacts
come from their presence in the natural environment, where con-
tinuous decay caused by weathering, sudden and dramatic events
such as flooding and earthquake, and the impact of encroaching
urbanization all contribute to the accelerating loss of unique archi-
tectural treasures. As observed in recent dramatic events in Italy,
among natural hazards, earthquakes are one of the greatest threats
to masonry structures. L’Aquila’s prefecture is an icon of the his-
torical structures significantly damaged during the earthquake of
April 6th, 2009 (Augenti and Parisi 2010). Only a few years later,
in May 2012, the Emilia region was shaken by an earthquake, and
many monumental buildings were damaged; a symbol was the col-
lapse of the clock tower of Finale Emilia (Acito et al. 2014). From
these dramatic experiences it is evident that action must be taken to
carefully assess and mitigate the seismic risk to which historical
structures (e.g., buildings, churches, towers), mainly constituted
1
Postdoctoral Researcher, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineer-
ing, Univ. of Florence, Via di S. Marta, 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy (correspond-
ing author). ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3318-518X. E-mail:
antoninomaria.marra@unifi.it
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Florence, Via di S. Marta, 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy. ORCID:
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2192-0258. E-mail: luca.salvatori@unifi.it
3
Full Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of
Florence, Via di S. Marta, 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy. E-mail: paolo.spinelli@
unifi.it
4
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Univ. of Florence, Via di S. Marta, 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy. ORCID:
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5536-3269. E-mail: gianni.bartoli@unifi.it
Note. This manuscript was submitted on July 13, 2016; approved on
December 2, 2016; published online on March 3, 2017. Discussion period
open until August 3, 2017; separate discussions must be submitted for in-
dividual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Performance of Con-
structed Facilities, © ASCE, ISSN 0887-3828.
of masonry, are exposed. The core of the seismic risk assessment
procedures is the method for estimating seismic capacity and de-
mand of the structures.
A growing number of studies dealing with nonlinear seismic
analyses of historical masonry towers can be identified in the liter-
ature. Such efforts have been carried out with one-dimensional fi-
nite element (FE) models (Casolo 1998) or simple beam models
(Riva et al. 1998; Lucchesi and Pintucchi 2007; Pintucchi and Zani
2014; Salvatori et al. 2015; Facchini and Betti 2016) focused on the
global behavior of slender medieval masonry towers under seismic
loads. In the presence of large openings or for stubbier towers,
two-dimensional or three-dimensional FE models (Carpinteri
and Invernizzi 2006; Ivorra and Pallars 2006; Dogangun et al.
2008; Bayraktar et al. 2010; Peña et al. 2010; D‘Ambrisi et al.
2012; Milani et al. 2012; Acito et al. 2014; Bartoli et al. 2016)
are more suitable. Discrete models based on rigid body mechanics
(Salvatori and Spinelli 2007) and macroelement assemblies (Milani
et al. 2012; Casolo et al. 2013) represent a compromise in terms of
calculation time and modeling accuracy.
When structural nonlinearities are explicitly taken into account,
seismic capacity and demand can be obtained through the applica-
tion of, in increasing order of complexity, nonlinear static analysis
(NSA) (Fajfar and Gaspersic 1996), nonlinear dynamic analysis
(NDA) (Riva et al. 1998), or incremental dynamic analysis (IDA)
(Vamvatsikos and Cornell 2002). For steel and reinforced-concrete
frame structures, NDA and IDA represent state-of-the-art proce-
dures because the modeling of the constitutive behavior of the
materials, cross sections, and structural elements is relatively con-
solidated in the literature for cyclic loading. On the other hand, for
masonry structures (particularly historical ones) the mechanical
models are less mature, due to the great variability of both the
material constituents and the constructive techniques. The updating
of FE models is commonly adopted by using the results of dynamic
identifications of the real structure in order to reduce the last sour-
ces of uncertainty (e.g., Bartoli et al. 2013; Pieraccini et al. 2014).
Further uncertainties are related to the modeling approach and can
be differently addressed (e.g., Berti et al. 2016). For these reasons,
NSA, if validated by IDA, could still be used for practical vulner-
ability assessment. Despite the large number of works on NSA of

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 masonry towers, little research addresses IDA (e.g., Pintucchi and
Zani 2014; Betti et al. 2014).
This paper compares the results obtained by the application of
NSA and IDA to the archetype of a medieval tower with the build-
ing typology of the paradigmatic site of San Gimignano (Italy).
This town, included in the United Nations Educational Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Cultural Heritage list,
is famous for its large number of monumental towers.
From the structural point of view, all towers present a hollow
rectangular (often square) cross section, approximately constant
along the height, with thick walls and small openings. The global
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structural behavior of the chosen reference structure, neglecting

possible local failure mechanisms, is studied by assuming a
Timoshenko beam behavior of the model with no tensile strength
and limited compressive strength in the vertical direction. Over-
coming of the ultimate compressive strain produces cross section
failure. The computational treatment has been carried out by a set
of rigid blocks with nonlinear elastic damageable interfaces.
In the next section, the adopted mechanical model is outlined.
The two seismic procedures and their results are reported in the
third section. Subsequently, NSA and IDA results are compared.
Finally, the uncertainties in the vulnerability term due to record-
to-record variability in IDA results are estimated and compared
with those due to material uncertainties in NSA results. Some
concluding remarks are reported at the end of the paper.

Mechanical Model Fig. 1. Masonry towers of the town of San Gimignano (Tuscany, Italy)
(image credit: Antonino Maria Marra)
The tower geometry is approximated by a rectangular prism with a
base 10 m in length (l) along the earthquake direction and 2.5 m in
width (t) across the earthquake direction and with a height (h) of
40 m. Thus an equivalent cantilever beam is adopted, whose rec-
tangular cross section (l × t) is used to approximate the combined 40
axial-flexural behavior of the tower. Local damage that may occur
in the belfries, merlons, or other parts is neglected, as is the pres- 35
ence of openings, because they are usually very small in the con-
sidered building typology (Fig. 1). Consequently, in terms of its
30
global behavior, the tower can be modeled as a geometrically non-
linear Timoshenko beam, with cantilever static scheme and suitable
moment-curvature constitutive model. 25
For the computational treatment, a general tool (Salvatori and
Spinelli 2007) is used. The tower is modeled as a set of rigid blocks, 20
placed one on top of another, interacting through horizontal plane
nonlinear deformable interfaces (Fig. 2). The rigid blocks provide 15
the assumption of the plane sections keeping planarity. Arbitrary
rotations and displacements of the blocks are considered, while
10
small deformations of the interfaces are assumed (corotational non-
linear kinematics). The interfaces are capable of elastic-plastic
behavior in the tangential direction, with Mohr-Coulomb frictional 5
behavior and a nonassociated flow rule. In the normal direction,
nontensile behavior with limited compressive strength and ultimate 0
compressive strain controlling the damage of the interfaces is used
to derive the constitutive model relating the normal-to-interface
-10 -5 0 5 10
relative displacement and rotation to the normal-to-interface force
and moment on the blocks interacting through the interface.
Fig. 3 represents a sketch of the nth and mth rigid blocks with Fig. 2. Discrete-element model
the corresponding local reference systems, in which un and vn are,
respectively, the horizontal and vertical displacement of the nth
block and ϕn is its rotation; um , vm , and ϕm are the equivalent prop-
erties for the mth block. The orientation of the interface between the This minimalist modeling strategy, which underuses the capa-
two blocks, θI , is defined as the angle between the line connecting bilities of the computational tool and is unable to predict local dam-
the center of mass of each block (Gn and Gm ) and the plane of the age, is capable of representing with reasonable accuracy the global
interface. behavior of the tower with low computational cost. The main global

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 Table 1. List of the Earthquake Events
Number Event M w R (km) PGA (g) SF
1 Bingol, 2003 6.3 14.0 0.297 0.56
2 Campano Lucano, 1980 6.9 25.0 0.060 2.78
3 Mt. Vatnafjoll, 1987 6.0 24.0 0.033 5.08
4 Friuli, 1976 6.5 23.0 0.357 0.47
5 Golbasi, 1986 6.0 29.0 0.039 4.27
6 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 6.0 0.529 0.32
7 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 14.0 0.178 0.94
8 Vrancea, 1990 6.9 6.0 0.030 5.61
9 Friuli (aftershock), 1976 6.0 12.0 0.112 1.48
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10 Umbria Marche, 1997 6.0 25.0 0.069 2.40

11 Friuli (aftershock), 1976 6.0 28.0 0.102 1.64
12 Avej, 2002 6.5 28.0 0.446 0.37
13 Mt. Vatnafjoll, 1987 6.0 24.0 0.025 6.73
14 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 24.0 0.127 1.31
Fig. 3. Sketch of two rigid blocks with interface 15 Vrancea, 1990 6.3 7.0 0.009 18.95
16 Umbria Marche, 1997 6.0 25.0 0.105 1.58
17 Umbria Marche, 1997 6.0 27.0 0.032 5.16
18 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 22.0 0.052 3.19
19 Montenegro, 1979 6.9 21.0 0.181 0.92
fractures of the tower behavior are modeled: axial and flexural stiff- 20 South Iceland, 2000 6.5 15.0 0.359 0.46
ness due to the normal elasticity of the interfaces, shear stiffness 21 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 15.0 0.127 1.31
due to the tangential elasticity, horizontal cracking due to the non- 22 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 20.0 0.105 1.59
23 Friuli, 1976 6.5 23.0 0.316 0.53
tensile normal behavior of the interfaces, compressive crushing and
24 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 28.0 0.020 8.21
damage due to the normal plastic-damageable model, shear sliding 25 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 6.0 0.568 0.29
(which never occurred in the simulations of this paper), and second- 26 Umbria Marche, 1997 6.0 21.0 0.163 1.03
order effects due to the corotational kinematics. 27 Avej, 2002 6.5 28.0 0.433 0.39
The mechanical properties of the masonry were selected from the 28 South Iceland (aftershock), 2000 6.4 14.0 0.116 1.43
data reported in Borri (2011) for the considered masonry typology. 29 Golbasi, 1986 6.0 29.0 0.055 3.04
Particular assumptions were a mass density (ρ) of 1900 kg=m3 and 30 South Iceland, 2000 6.5 5.0 0.318 0.52
normal (E) and tangential (G) elastic moduli of 1.20 GPa and Mean — 6.3 19.6 0.179 2.75
0.48 GPa, respectively. The friction coefficient between blocks was Note: PGA refer to unscaled records.
assumed to be 0.4. Compressive strength was been assumed to be
f c ¼ 2.75 MPa. Finally, the ultimate compressive strain εu ¼
6.9 × 10−3 was assumed, corresponding to a strain ductility factor 0.8
με ¼ εu =εe ¼ εu f c =E ¼ 3.0, where εe is the elastic strain.
The first and second natural periods of the tower—T 1 ¼ 1.136 0.7
and T 2 ¼ 0.251 s, respectively—were computed through modal
analysis. 0.6

0.5
Seismic Analyses
0.4

Seismic Input 0.3

Seismic input was defined in terms of elastic pseudo-acceleration
and displacement spectra for NSA and by an earthquake scenario 0.2
(set of records of earthquake ground-acceleration time histories)
for IDA. 0.1
For NSA, the target elastic spectrum was defined by a peak
ground acceleration of ag ¼ 0.167 g and an amplification factor 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
of F0 ¼ 2.351, with T B ¼ 0.111 s and T C ¼ 0.332 s defining
the range of periods of the constant pseudo-acceleration and T D ¼
2.28 s the period at which the constant displacement range starts. Fig. 4. Pseudo-acceleration elastic spectra of the 30 scaled records,
These parameters represent an average earthquake for an Italian site. mean spectrum (thick line); the scaled records have been obtained
For IDA, 30 acceleration time histories, compatible with the target by multiplying the corresponding unscaled time histories by SF
spectrum adopted for NSA, were considered. The selection of the reported in the last column of Table 1
events was carried out in REXEL (Iervolino et al. 2010), assigning
10% lower and 30% upper tolerance for the average spectral match-
ing in the period range from 0.15 to 2.36 s. Combination N1 was
chosen from among the 1,000 combinations of 30 records provided source-to-site distance (R), the peak ground acceleration (PGA) of
by the computer program because its elastic spectra were character- the unscaled records, and the scale factor (SF), which multiplies
ized by the smallest deviation from the mean spectrum. Table 1 the time history of each unscaled record in order to match the target
reports the name of each event, the moment magnitude (Mw ), the spectrum of Fig. 4. Numerical integrations of the equations of motion

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 6
of linear single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems subjected to the x 10
3.5
earthquake records were carried out to determine the corresponding
elastic pseudo-acceleration spectra. The natural periods of the 3
SDOF system were progressively increased from 0.0 to 4.0 s in steps
of 0.025 s. The central difference method with a time step of 0.001 s 2.5
was adopted as the integration scheme.
2

NSA 1.5
Nonlinear Static Analysis was conducted by using the classical N2
method (Fajfar and Gaspersic 1996; Vidic et al. 1994), with the 1
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details embraced by Italian Building Code (IBC) (NTC 2008;

0.5
High Council of Public Works 2009) and invariant load distribu-
tions. The seismic action was applied along the tower height 0
and was controlled by a scalar multiplier. A standard incremental- 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
iterative procedure was used to obtain the capacity curve. The target
value of the horizontal displacement at the tower top (δ) was pre-
scribed at each incremental step and the resulting base shear force
(F) was computed by iteratively varying the load multiplier until
the equilibrium in the deformed configuration was satisfied within
a required tolerance. The analysis was concluded at collapse, which
was assumed to occur if either (1) the ultimate strain capacity was
overtaken in a material point, typically the leeward edge of the base
cross section (toe-crushing), or (2) the base shear force fell below
80% of its peak value in the decreasing branch of the capacity
curve. The displacement of the tower top at collapse was the
displacement capacity of the tower (δ u ). The displacement of tower
top at the elastic limit (δe ) (i.e., at the occurrence of either the first Fig. 5. NSA capacity curves with corresponding piecewise lineariza-
tensile cracking or the first reaching of the compressive strength) tions and collapse configurations; displacements of the towers in the
was assumed as the threshold for damage onset. A simplified piece- boxes are amplified by a factor of 60
wise linear capacity curve was constructed by using the secant stiff-
ness at 70% of the peak strength in the increasing branch of the
capacity curve, and an equivalent yielding force computed by 0.5
the energy equivalence between the original and the piecewise lin-
ear capacity curves. The displacement demand (δd ) was obtained
through the mean response spectrum of the 30 scaled records as a 0.4
function of the peak bedrock acceleration and of the mechanical
properties of the SDOF system equivalent to the first mode of
the tower by considering proper modal shape and participation
0.3
factor.
Fig. 5 shows the capacity curves obtained by considering the tri-
angular and uniform load distributions together with the correspond-
0.2
ing piecewise linearization. The capacity curve of the uniform load
distribution shows a higher shear force at collapse than that of tri-
angular distribution. Conversely, the ultimate displacement is lower
0.1
for uniform load distribution. In the same figure, the configurations
at collapse of the two NSAs are shown in the two boxes in the lower
part of the figure. As expected, the configuration at collapse corre-
sponding to the triangular load distribution shows a more pro- 0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
nounced deformation than that of uniform load distribution. The
ultimate displacement for the uniform and triangular load distribu-
tions was 0.21 and 0.27 m, respectively, both of which are close to Fig. 6. Piecewise linear capacity curves and mean ADRS for the
0.24 m, which is the maximum displacement according to the thresh- 30 records
old δ max =H of 0.6% prescribed by building codes (NTC 2008; CEN
2005). A discussion of the displacement capacity proposed by
building codes can be found in Orlando et al. (2016).
In Fig. 6 the two capacity curves are reported in terms of is p modal participation factor. From the relationship T  ¼
theffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
acceleration and displacement together with the mean elastic 2π Sd =Sa , the periods T u ¼ 1.03 s and T t ¼ 1.25 s were
Acceleration-Displacement Response Spectrum (ADRS) of the 30 estimated for the uniform and triangular distribution, respectively.
records for a 475-year return period. The curves of Fig. 5 were scaled In order to favor the comparisons between NSA results and IDA
through Sa ¼ F=M 1 and Sd ¼ δ=Γ1 ; where M1 ¼ ðϕT1 mιÞ2 =M 1 ¼ results, described in the next section, the mean elastic spectrum of
1,163;600 kg is the participation mass of the first mode; ϕ1 is the Fig. 4 was used to evaluate the displacement demand δd ¼
first mode shape; m is the mass matrix; ι is the influence vector; Γ1 Sde ðT  Þ in NSA, where Sde ðTÞ is the elastic displacement
M 1 ¼ ϕT1 mϕ1 is the modal mass; and Γ1 ¼ ϕT1 mι=M 1 ¼ 1.527 response spectrum (which coincides with the anelastic response

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 0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0 0.8
−0.1
−0.2
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−0.3
−0.4
10 15 20 25 30 35
(a)
(b) (c)
Fig. 7. Time histories of the displacement at tower top obtained by
progressively scaling Record #12; displacements of the towers in
the boxes are amplified by a factor of 60
because T  is larger than the spectral constant-velocity–constant-
acceleration threshold).
IDA
Incremental Dynamic Analysis allows the exploration of the seis-
mic performance of a structure from the elastic behavior to collapse
through the application of several progressively scaled earthquake
records (Vamvatsikos and Cornell 2002). An IDA plot is composed
of a set of curves (single-record IDA curves), one for each record,
that allows estimating the statistics of the engineering demand
parameter (EDP) given the intensity measure (IM).
A single-record IDA curve is obtained by scaling a certain re-
cord by a scalar factor that is incremented in n steps (n ¼ 50 in this
study). Its points represent the n couples [δ max =H; Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ] cor-
responding to the n scaled records. For each scaled record, the
maximum horizontal displacement at the tower top divided by
the tower height δ max =H was computed through numerical simu-
lations carried out on the rigid block model. Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ is the spec-
tral ordinate of the pseudo-acceleration elastic spectrum of each
scaled record at the first natural period of the tower.
Fig. 7(a) reports part of the time history of the displacement of
the top of the tower produced by progressively scaling Earthquake
Record #12. In the boxes at the bottom of the same figure, two
configurations of the tower during the earthquake are shown. In
particular, even if collapse was observed for the failure at the base
of the tower [Fig. 7(c)], during the shaking the tower showed sig-
nificant oscillations in the second mode [Fig. 7(b)]. This behavior is
expected because the participating mass of the first mode was the
61.2% of the total mass (1,900,000 kg). The time history of the
© ASCE 04017032-5
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1.4
1.2
1
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014 0.016 0.018 0.02
Fig. 8. IDA curves of the 30 records with collapse points correspond-
ing to dynamic instability (black dots)
displacement of the tower top at collapse is highlighted by a thick
black line, showing the overturning of the tower.
The complete set of IDA curves is shown in Fig. 8 together with
the collapse points due to dynamic instability. According to
Vamvatsikos and Cornell (2004) the collapse point due to dynamic
instability for the single-record IDA curve is identified by the
first point of the curve characterized by a tangent stiffness equal
to 20% of the elastic curve. This could be called the stiffness-
reduction criterion. An alternative criterion for identifying the
collapse point of the single-record IDA curve in terms of IM—
i.e., Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ—is based on the intersection between the rocking
failure threshold δ max =H suggested by IBC (0.6% for existing
buildings) and the single-record IDA curve. The collapse points
present a mean value in terms of δ max =H that is in agreement with
the threshold suggested by some building codes for new structures
failing in rocking (0.8%) but that overestimates the threshold for
existing structures (NTC 2008; CEN 2005). The left plot in Fig. 9
confirms this result by reporting the histogram of δmax =H together
with its mean and 16, 50, and 84% fractile values. The right-hand
side of Fig. 9 reports the histogram of Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ. Fig. 10 reports
the curves representing the cross sectional 16, 50, and 84% fractiles
of the acceleration of the single-record IDA curves evaluated at
constant δ max =H. The same figure also reports the fractile collapse
points, whose coordinates are the corresponding fractiles of δ max =H
and Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ of the single-record IDA collapse points. Because
of the procedure described (see also Vamvatsikos and Cornell
2004), the fractile collapse points do not lie on the homologous
cross-sectional fractile curve. For example, the 16% fractile col-
lapse point seems to lie on the cross-sectional 50% fractile IDA
curves by chance. If a 50% fractile collapse point is considered
to estimate the safety of the structure, it can be observed that
the tower is able to resist up to a value of Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ of 0.6 g.
It is evident that a seismic analysis of a masonry tower by consid-
ering the global behavior represents only an upper limit of its seis-
mic capacity. A similar result was observed by Salvatori et al.
(2015), in which the return period associated with the collapse
of the tower was much higher than that prescribed by some building
codes. It is worth noting that this results may be also dictated by the
absence of the vertical component of the earthquake records, which
may significantly influence the seismic behavior of masonry
structures.
J. Perform. Constr. Facil.
 7 7

6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2
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1 1

0 0
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
−3
(a) x 10 (b)
Fig. 9. Histograms of (a) EDP; (b) IM at collapse with their mean (solid vertical line) and 16, 50, and 84% fractiles (dashed vertical lines)

Comparison between NSA and IDA Results

1.4
Fig. 11 shows a first comparison between the NSA and IDA results
in the Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ − δ max =H plane. Both NSA curves are below to
1.2 the 50% fractile IDA curve and show ultimate displacements lower
than that of the collapse point predicted by IDA. This comparison
1 confirms that the NSA results are on the conservative side.
Another comparison can be made in terms of the base shear
0.8 force and the nondimensional maximum displacement at the tower
top (Ferracuti et al. 2009). Fig. 12 shows the criterion adopted to
0.6 define the shear force. It was first identified the instant of time cor-
responding to the maximum of the absolute value of the displace-
0.4 ment. The corresponding shear force F was determined as the

0.2 0.4

0 0.2
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02

0
Fig. 10. Cross sectional 16, 50, and 84% fractile IDA curves and frac-
tile collapse points
-0.2

-0.4
1.4 15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5 18 18.5 19

1.2
× 107
2
1

0.8 1

0.6 0

0.4
-1

0.2
-2
15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5 18 18.5 19
0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014 0.016 0.018 0.02

Fig. 12. Definition of the shear force associated to the maximum

Fig. 11. NSA curves against 50% fractile IDA curve displacement

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 × 106 on the mean and median IDA curve. When the shear force is chosen
4
equal to that corresponding to the maximum displacement of the
3.5 time history (Δt ¼ 0), both mean and median IDA curves under-
estimate the NSA curves. Conversely, if the shear force is chosen as
3 the absolute maximum value along the time history (Δt ¼ ∞), IDA
results overestimate those of NSA. Values of the interval Δt from
2.5
0.1 to 0.3 T 1 allow the NSA curves to include IDA results. The
2 subjectivity of the results and their strong dependence on the
choices of the analyst (time interval widths Δt) are evident.
1.5 The third comparison between NSA and IDA is done by report-
ing the results of both analyses in terms of an EDP (the index I d ,
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1 defined below) and the spectral acceleration at the first period of the
tower Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ. According to the adopted displacement-based
0.5
seismic approach, the seismic performance of the tower is related
0
to displacement demand and capacity. The following index is used
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 (Powell and Allahabadi 1988):

δd − δe
Fig. 13. Results of NSA and IDA compared in the force-displacement Id ¼ ð1Þ
plane δu − δe

Negative (or vanishing) values of I d correspond to an undam-

maximum absolute value on an interval Δt centered in the instant
at which the maximum displacement is achieved. The black dot in
Fig. 12 represents the shear force obtained at the maximum dis-
placement (Δt ¼ 0), while for the generic interval Δ̄t the value
of the shear force is provided by the gray dot. For example, by
assuming Δt ¼ 0.14T 1 , the couples (δ max , F) are reported as
crosses in Fig. 13, together with the mean curve obtained by aver-
aging at constant displacement the curves interpolating the forces
for the 30 records. Because the ultimate displacement for each
earthquake record is different, the averaging was performed on a
progressively reduced number of records as the sampling displace-
ment increased. The average curve was terminated at the average
ultimate displacement among those of the 30 acceleration time
histories.
The mean results of the IDA for Δt ¼ 0.14T 1 fall between the
capacity curves resulting from the NSAs with constant and linear
load patterns. The comparison strongly depends on the amplitude
of the time interval in which the force is evaluated as the maximum
absolute. In particular, it is observed that by reducing/increasing
that interval, the mean IDA curve moves below/above the NSA
curves. Fig. 14 shows the effect of the time interval width Δt
aged structure (for which δd ≤ δ e ); values greater than or equal to
unity correspond to a collapsed structure (for which δ d ≥ δ u ). For
the sake of its representation, I d is restricted to [0,1] by mapping
negative values to 0 and those exceeding unity to 1.
Fig. 7 reports the time history responses of the tower exposed to
one of the 30 earthquake records progressively scaled up to the
collapse of the tower. The displacement demand δ d was defined
for each value of the scaling as the maximum displacement of
the tower top. The elastic displacement δ e and the ultimate dis-
placement δu were obtained for two particular values of the scaling
corresponding to the tower exiting the elastic regime and to the
collapsing tower, respectively. In particular, δ e was defined as
the maximum displacement of the last amplification value of the
time-history response in which the tower is still entirely linear elas-
tic. δ u was defined as the maximum displacement of the last am-
plification value of the time-history response before collapse (thick
curve in Fig. 7).
The results in terms of I d versus Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ are reported in
Fig. 15. It is evident that NSA results are more conservative than
the mean IDA curve for moderate and large values of the perfor-
mance index I d . In contrast, the mean IDA curve is more
conservative for the lowest values of EDP.

× 106 × 106
9 9

8 8

7 7

6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
(a) (b)

Fig. 14. Effect of the time interval width Δt on the (a) mean; (b) median IDA curve

© ASCE 04017032-7 J. Perform. Constr. Facil.

J. Perform. Constr. Facil., 2017, 31(4): 04017032

 1 1
0.8
0.6
0.4
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0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Fig. 15. Mean value of I d versus Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ
Similar to the representation in Fig. 11, the results of the
vulnerability in terms of I d versus Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ seem to be more
appropriate. In fact, in the classical force-displacement representa-
tion, NSA does not include dependence on the spectrum, but IDA
does; moreover, there exists the aforementioned arbitrariness in the
choice of the time interval in which to look for the maximum force
in the IDA.
Fig. 16 reports the histograms of the elastic and ultimate dis-
placements obtained by collecting the values to be used in
Eq. (1). In the same figure, the relevant Gaussian fittings are super-
imposed to highlight their dispersion. The deterministic (because
they do not include the record-to-record variability) results of
NSA are also reported, showing higher values than the IDA mean
value for the elastic displacement and lower values for the ultimate
displacement. The anticipated overcoming, in terms of IM, of the
elastic threshold in the dynamic settings is explained by the con-
tributions of the higher modes. On the other hand, the larger ulti-
mate displacements in dynamic settings can be explained by
considering that the change of sign of the ground acceleration
can return to the stable configuration a tower whose displacements
would determine an overturning in the static settings.
20
15
10
5
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Fig. 16. Probability-density functions (PDFs) of the elastic and ulti-
mate displacement from IDA compared to NSA values (vertical lines)
© ASCE
J. Perform. Constr. Facil., 2017, 31(4): 04017032
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
1.4 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
Fig. 17. Fragility curves
Fragility Curve
The results of IDA can be used to quantify the record-to-record
variability, which represents a source of uncertainty in the vulner-
ability term (i.e., the relation between EDP and IM provided by the
seismic analysis of the structure). Thus a fragility curve was esti-
mated by counting the number of times the EDP, expressed in terms
of I d , was equal to 1 for each value of Sa ðT 1 ,5%Þ. The fragility
curve by IDA is reported in Fig. 17 together with the fragility
curves by NSA for the uniform and linear load distributions, in
which the material uncertainties have been taken into account.
In particular, by adopting the procedure developed in Salvatori et al.
(2015), the fragility curves were determined by considering the
elastic modulus (0.70–1.70 GPa), the compressive strength
(1.30–4.20 MPa), the mass density (1;600–2,200 kg=m3 ), and
the strain ductility factor (1–4) as uncertain parameters with uni-
form distributions. The fragility curves in the deterministic cases
are also shown in Fig. 17.
The nonmonotonic trend of the fragility curve of IDA is a direct
consequence of the resurrection property of some single-record
IDA curves (Vamvatsikos and Cornell 2002). It is once again evi-
dent that the NSA results are on the conservative side: at any IM,
the probability of collapse given by NSA is larger than the corre-
sponding value given by IDA. The effect of the uncertainties on the
material for NSA is very similar for both the load distributions. It is
interesting to observe that the coefficients of variation of all fragil-
ity curves are very similar, which indicates that the record-to-record
variability and the material variability produce comparable levels of
dispersion.
Concluding Remarks
Both NSA and IDA have been applied for the seismic analysis
of the global behavior of a medieval masonry tower modeled by
rigid blocks interacting through nonlinear-elastic damageable
interfaces.
0.5 Nonlinear static analysis with uniform and triangular load dis-
tributions provided estimations with significant safety margins
compared with IDA results. The ultimate drift of 0.6% prescribed
by some building codes for existing structures is in agreement with
the results of 0.52 and 0.68% obtained by NSA with uniform and
04017032-8 J. Perform. Constr. Facil.
 triangular load distributions, respectively. Conversely, IDA results
suggest a larger mean value of 0.77%. In conclusion, it seems that
NSA results are on the conservative side with respect to IDA
results.
The results of the two seismic analyses were also compared in
terms of force versus displacement. It was observed that the com-
parison is strongly affected by the choice of the width of the time
interval Δt used to compute the shear force associated with the
maximum displacement in IDA. In particular, intervals from
0.1T 1 to 0.3T 1 allow the mean IDA curve to fall within the two
NSA curves. In addition, when the shear force is selected in cor-
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respondence with the maximum displacement (Δt ¼ 0), the mean
IDA curve falls under the two NSA curves, whereas if Δt ¼ ∞
(the maximum shear force during the shaking) is selected the curve
falls over. It is evident that the comparison of the two methods in
the force-displacement diagram is ambiguous because it strongly
depends on the judgment of the analyst.
A more suitable comparison between NSA and IDA was carried
out by expressing the results in terms of a different EDP, which
could be considered as a damage index, versus IM. It was observed
that NSA is more conservative than IDA for moderate and large
damages. In contrast, elastic thresholds in IDA are reached earlier
than in NSA.
A comparison between fragility curves highlighted the fact
that NSAs accounting for the material uncertainties are on the
conservative side compared with IDAs with record-to-record
variability. In terms of coefficient of variation, record-to-record
variability and material uncertainties provide comparable levels
of dispersion on the fragility curves.
Acknowledgments
The authors kindly acknowledge the Region of Tuscany, which
financially supported the research (theme PAR FAS 2007-2013 -
CIPE No. 166/2007 - Line 1.1.a.3: Science and Technology for
the preservation and enhancement of cultural heritage).
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J. Perform. Constr. Facil., 2017, 31(4): 04017032