Retrofit hypotheses of a pre-normative steel school building by fluid-viscous damper-based technologies

Two advanced seismic protection technologies, and relevant hypotheses of application to the retrofit of an Italian pre-normative steel school building, are examined in this paper. The two technologies consist in a dissipative bracing system, and a damped cable system, both incorporating pressurized fluid viscous dampers as protecting devices. The essential characteristics and performance of the dampers and the two systems, along with their analytical/computational modelling criteria, are recalled in the first part of this paper. The dimensions, layouts and locations selected for the constituting elements of the two rehabilitation solutions are then discussed. A synthesis of the nonlinear dynamic analyses and performance-based evaluations carried out on the case study building in original and protected conditions is finally proposed.