PSI - Issue 78

Giuseppe Brandonisio et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 78 (2026) 2147–2153

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1. Introduction In recent years, the antiquity of Italy’s building heritage, combined with the significant damage and collapses caused by strong earthquakes, has drawn increasing attention to the issue of seismic vulnerability assessment. For unreinforced masonry (URM) structures, this evaluation is particularly complex, as many of these buildings are not isolated, but rather form part of larger structural aggregates. This condition is especially common in the historical centers of Italian cities (Giuffrè 1993), where building aggregates have evolved through the progressive expansion of the urban fabric. In many cases, additional stories were added to existing structures, and horizontal extensions were achieved by attaching new structural portions to pre-existing ones (Formisano et al., 2010). As a result, these buildings often present irregular geometries, discontinuities in materials and construction techniques, and complex interactions among structural units. In this paper the case of the Carabinieri Barracks in Naples is analyzed, as a complex masonry building composed of several interconnected parts built over different historical periods. The seismic assessment of such structures poses unique challenges in terms of both modeling and interpretation of the structural behavior under seismic loads. This study evaluates the seismic vulnerability of the barracks through nonlinear static (pushover) analysis, considering both the entire complex as a unified structure and each individual portion separately, in order to assess the effects of structural interaction and complexity. The proposed approach follows previous research by the authors related to the seismic assessment of historic masonry structures (Valente et al., 2020) (Brandonisio and De Luca, 2021) (Brandonisio et al., 2020) (Sorrentino et al., 2023-a) (Sorrentino et al., 2023-b). 2. The case study: Carabinieri Barracks in Naples 2.1. Historical evolution of the complex The Garibaldi Barracks is listed among the properties of the Italian State and is recognized as a site of significant historical and artistic value, located in the historic center of Naples.

Fig. 1 Subdivision of the Complex by construction periods