Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile - Tesi di Dottorato

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Questa collezione raccoglie le Tesi di Dottorato Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile dell'Università della Calabria.

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    Resilienza e rischio nella rilettura urbanistica dell'emergenza. Il ruolo della viabilità strategica
    (Università della Calabria, 2020-02-18) Gaudio, Sara; Furgiuele, Franco; Francini, Mauro
    Urban systems are increasingly experiencing processes of evolution, change and transition. Therefore, there is an urgent need of identifying new planning approaches aimed at promptly responding to them. Over the years, the themes of risk and security have, more or less sponta-neously, contributed to direct the ways of governing the territories. However, the most recent crises have shown how many critical issues have remained unresolved. In this respect, new challenges have to be faced, especially in terms of emergency planning. Starting from a theoretical reflection on the current planning orientation and on the concept of urban resilience, this research tries to use a novel meth-odological approach with a view to provide a new characterisation to Emer-gency Plans, more spatial and not just operational. Following the need to identify some categories of relevant urban elements on the territory, the proposed performance-based framework offers a formal procedure for the detection of strategic road infrastructures. The obtained results allow to plan already in “peacetime” the best alternative routes to ar-rive safely in the areas established by Civil Protection in case of event and to facilitate rescue operations. Therefore, the analysis of the physical and functional relationships among different elements of the territory shifts the focus of emergency from a piece-meal approach to a more integrated one. This will be capable of addressing more consistently the future decisions concerning the urban structures, typi-cal of ordinary territorial planning.
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    Analysis of fracture phenomena in concrete structures by means of cohesive modeling techniques
    (Università della Calabria, 2021-06-30) De Maio, Umberto; Critelli, Salvatore; Greco, Fabrizio; Nevone Blasi, Paolo
    Still today, the fracture phenomenon in cementitious materi-als is a research topic widely investigated by numerous research-ers in materials and structural engineering, since it involves many theoretical and practical aspects concerning both strength and durability properties of common concrete structures. In-deed, cracking is one of the main causes of the severe deteriora-tion of concrete structures, usually leading to an unacceptable re-duction of their serviceability time. The fracture processes, in-cluding onset, propagation, and coalescence of multiple cracks, arise in the structural members because of the low tensile strength of concrete, which is ultimately related to the existence of voids or undetected defects in the material microstructure.Such cracking processes significantly affect the global mechani-cal behavior of the concrete structures and may facilitate the in-gress of corrosive media; therefore, in the scientific community there is a strong interest in reducing cracks width to a minimum or in preventing cracking altogether. In the technical literature, several simplified numerical models, based on either linear-elas-tic or elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, are proposed to predict the fracture mechanisms during any stage of the lifetime of con-crete structures. However, the application of these models is somehow limited, due to their incapacity to capture the complex inelastic mechanical behavior of reinforced concrete members, involving multiple concrete cracking and steel yielding and their mutual interaction under the combined action of axial and bend-ing loadings. This thesis aims to develop a sophisticated numerical frac-ture model to predict the cracking processes in quasi-brittle ma-terials like concrete, and the main failure mechanisms of the re-inforced concrete structures in a comprehensive manner. The proposed methodology relies on a diffuse interface model (DIM), based on an inter-element cohesive fracture approach, where co-hesive elements are inserted along all the internal mesh bounda-ries to simulate multiple cracks initiation, propagation and coa-lescence in concrete. Such a model, is used in combination with an embedded truss model (ETM) for steel reinforcing bars in the failure analysis of reinforced concrete structures. In particular, truss elements equipped with an elastoplastic constitutive be-havior are suitably connected to the concrete mesh via a bond-slip interface, in order to capture the interaction with the sur-rounding concrete layers as well as with the neighboring propa-gating cracks. The proposed fracture model takes advantage of a novel mi-cromechanics-based calibration technique, developed and pro-posed in this thesis, to control and/or reduce the well-known mesh dependency issues of the diffuse cohesive approach, re-lated to the artificial compliance in the elastic regime. In this way, the initial stiffness parameters of the cohesive element employed in the diffuse interface model are suitably calibrated by means of a rigorous micromechanical approach, based on the concept of representative volume element. In particular, by performing sev-eral micromechanical analyses two charts have been constructed which provide the dimensionless normal and tangential stiffness parameters as functions of both the Poisson’s ratio of the bulk and the admitted reduction in the overall Young’s modulus after the insertion of the cohesive interfaces. The proposed fracture model has been firstly validated by performing numerical analysis in plain concrete elements, and secondly, employed to analyze the failure mechanisms in exter-nally strengthened reinforced concrete beams. In particular, several numerical simulations, involving pre-notched concrete beams subjected to mode-I loading conditions, have been performed to investigate the capability of the diffuse interface model to predict self-similar crack propagation and to assess the mesh-induced artificial toughening effects, also intro-ducing two new fracture models for comparison purpose. More-over, sensitivity analyses with respect to the mesh size and the mesh orientation have been performed to investigate the mesh dependency properties of the proposed fracture model. Further validation of the proposed diffuse interface model has been pro-vided for plain concrete structures subjected to general mixed-mode loading conditions. The role of the mode-II inelastic parameters (i.e. critical tangential stress and mode-II fracture en-ergy) on the nonlinear behavior of the embedded cohesive inter-faces is investigated in a deeper manner. In particular, two sen-sitivity analyses have been performed by independently varying the mode-II inelastic parameters required by the traction-separa-tion law adopted in the proposed concrete fracture model, in or-der to quantify the above-mentioned artificial toughening effects associated with mode-II crack propagation. Moreover, compari-sons with numerical and experimental results, with reference to mode-I and mixed-mode fracture tests, have been reported, highlighting the effectiveness of the adopted diffuse interface model (DIM) in predicting the failure response in a reliable man-ner. Subsequently, the integrated fracture approach is success-fully employed to predict the nonlinear response of (eventually strengthened) reinforced concrete beams subjected to general loading conditions. Firstly, the failure analysis of reinforced con-crete (RC) beams has been performed to assess the capability of the integrated fracture model to capture multiple crack initiation and propagation. Detailed stress analysis of the tensile reinforce-ment bars has been also reported to verify the capability of the embedded truss model (ETM) of capturing the tension stiffening effect. Secondly, the well-known concrete cover separation phe-nomenon has been predicted by performing complete failure simulations of FRP-strengthened RC elements. To this end, a sin-gle interface model (SIM) has been incorporated in the proposed fracture model to capture the mechanical interaction between the concrete element and the externally bonded reinforced system and to predict eventually debonding phenomena in con-crete/FRP plate interface. Suitable comparisons with available experimental results have clearly shown the reliability and the effectiveness (in terms of numerical accuracy) of the adopted fracture approach, especially in the crack pattern prediction. Fi-nally, the proposed integrated numerical model is used to pre-dict the structural response of ultra high-performance fiber-rein-forced concrete (UHPFRC) structures enhanced with embedded nanomaterials. In this case, the cohesive elements are equipped with a mixed-mode traction-separation law suitably calibrated to account for the toughening effect of the nano-reinforcement. The main numerical outcomes, presented in terms of both global structural response and final crack pattern, show the ability of the proposed approach to predict the load-carrying capacity of such structures, as well as to highlight the role of the embedded nano-reinforcement in the crack width control.
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    Dynamic Methods for Monitoring Structural Health: analytical and experimental aspects
    (Università della Calabria, 2018-11) Miceli, Angela; Zinno, Raffaele; Carbone, Vincenzo
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    Probabilistic assessment of the seismic performance of two earth dams in Southern Italy using simplified and advanced constitutive models
    (Università della Calabria, 2021-06-16) Regina, Gianluca; Conte, Enrico; Cairo, Roberto; Zimmaro, Paolo; Ziotopoulou, Katerina
    The large majority of existing earth dams were designed with old standards, which often accounted for the effects of earthquakes in a simplified manner. Nowadays, safety assessment of these structures is becoming of great importance, particularly for dams suffering the effects of ageing. This study presents a fully probabilistic approach to evaluate the seismic performance of two critical earth dams in the Calabria region, a seismically active area in Southern Italy. One of them (the Farneto del Principe dam) is not susceptible to liquefaction, whereas the other dam (the Angitola dam) is founded on potentially liquefiable soils. Seismic input motions are derived from site-specific probabilistic approaches. Non-ergodic ground response is implemented within a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) framework for one of the two dam sites. This non-ergodic PSHA is derived from numerical amplification functions based on one-dimensional simulations. Such well-documented early application of non-ergodic PSHA for earth dams in Italy may encourage a transformational shift from years of past practices based on deterministic amplification functions merged with PSHA results by means of hybrid approaches. Simplified (i.e., using the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion coupled with a simplified hysteretic procedure) and advanced (i.e., PM4Sand and PM4Silt) constitutive models are used to perform a comprehensive numerical simulation program for both dams. Field and laboratory geotechnical characterization data are used to calibrate these models. This calibration process is fully documented and potential issues discussed. Such fully-documented calibration process will enable future studies on similar infrastructure systems when advanced constitutive models are necessary. Shear strain and deformation patterns are analyzed and discussed, showing that for the Farneto del Principe dam (comprising non-liquefiable materials) both constitutive models provide similar results. However, when potentially liquefiable soils are involved, advanced constitutive models are necessary to capture the complexity and nuances of such materials. This effect is evident for the Angitola dam. For both dams, seismic vulnerability is analyzed by means of analytical fragility functions for various damage mechanisms and intensity measures. Such fragility functions are based on nonlinear deformation analyses within the multiple stripe analysis framework. All fragility functions derived in this study are shown and main outcomes are illustrated by summary tables reporting mean and standard deviation values of these curves. Finally, the efficiency and predictability of various ground motion intensity measures to predict different damage levels and mechanisms are calculated for both dams. Predictability of recent semi-empirical ground motion models is also calculated for all analyzed intensity measures. Overall, results from this analysis indicate that velocity-based ground motion properties, such as Peak Ground Velocity, Arias Intensity, Cumulative Absolute Velocity, and Cumulative Absolute Velocity after application of a 0.05 𝑚𝑠2 threshold acceleration provide good efficiencies in predicting damage. These intensity measures are the best in predicting damage states for both dams and all damage mechanisms. However, some of them are more predictable than others. After merging efficiency and predictability information, the best intensity measure to predict damage is the Cumulative Absolute Velocity, followed by the Arias intensity.
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    Analisi teorica/sperimentale di travi in calcestruzzo armato rinforzate con sistemi Steel-FRCM: caratterizzazione dei materiali/comportamento strutturale sotto carico monotono e ciclico/valutazione della deformazione di distacco intermedia
    (Università della Calabria, 2021-06-25) Nisticò, Mattia; Conte, Enrico; Bencardino, Francesco
    Il presente lavoro di tesi si propone di studiare il comportamento strutturale di travi di calcestruzzo armato (c.a.) in scala reale sottoposte a caricamento monotono e ciclico, rinforzate esternamente con sistema Steel-Fabric Reiforced Cementitious Matrix (S-FRCM). Le travi testate a flessione sono rinforzate con una tecnica tradizionale Externally Bonded (EB) e con una tecnica innovativa chiamata Inhibiting-Repairing-Strengthening (IRS) che prevede l’applicazione del sistema di rinforzo all’interno del ricoprimento di calcestruzzo con una opportuna matrice inorganica a base di polimeri di natura minerale, avente proprietà di inibizione dalla corrosione delle armature interne. I risultati sperimentali hanno evidenziato l’efficacia della tecnica IRS che, rispetto alla tecnica tradizionale EB, ha fatto registrare maggiori incrementi di carico ultimo e di fattore di duttilità. Inoltre, l’uso di una fibra di acciaio con scarsa capacità di impregnazione favorisce la modalità di collasso per debonding che ne riduce la capacità di rinforzo. Sono state, inoltre, condotte prove di adesione su provini di calcestruzzo e muratura allo scopo di indagare e comprendere il comportamento di interfaccia dei sistemi S-FRCM al variare della tipologia di fibra di acciaio e matrice di applicazione. Il distacco all'interfaccia fibra-matrice e fibra-supporto (senza asportazione della superficie di applicazione) sono le principali modalità di rottura osservate, oltre alla rottura per trazione della fibra. Dai risultati ottenuti sono state calibrate leggi coesive di interfaccia per le applicazioni dei sistemi di rinforzo su elementi di calcestruzzo da utilizzare nelle analisi teoriche. I risultati sperimentali delle travi sono stati confrontati con i risultati ottenuti da un modello numerico agli elementi finiti utile per validare le leggi di interfaccia e prevedere il comportamento strutturale delle travi rinforzate con sistema EB-IRS/S-FRCM. Infine, sono state effettuate considerazioni sulla valutazione della deformazione di distacco intermedia (intermediate debonding) di strisce di acciaio applicate su elementi di c.a. secondo le indicazioni riportate nel documento CNR-DT/215. I confronti sono stati eseguiti utilizzando i dati sperimentali ottenuti nello sviluppo della tesi ed un database di risultati collezionati dalla letteratura scientifica. Il confronto è effettuato anche con semplici formule predittive proposte da diversi autori. Da questi confronti si evince come le indicazioni del documento CNR-DT/215 forniscano risultati affidabili per le fibre con bassa densità ed al contrario errori non trascurabili XII nel caso di fibre di acciaio ad alta densità. Le formule predittive, caratterizzate dalla facilità d’uso, indicano valori accurati in combinazione con opportuni coefficienti parziali di sicurezza.
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    Analisi sismica non lineare di edifici con struttura in C.A. base fissa ed isolata in presenza di fenomeni di martellamento interno ed esterno
    (Università della Calabria, 2021-06-09) Labernarda, Rodolfo; Conte, Enrico; Mazza, Fabio
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    The quality of air transport service
    (Università della Calabria, 2021-03-25) Bellizzi, Maria Grazia; Conte, Enrico; Eboli, Laura
    The socioeconomic development of a country necessarily relies on the improvement of all transport services. With the introduction of new technologies, transport industry has developed considerably in recent years, and as a consequence people habits and travel choices changed as well. In this context, air transport has a significant role, and it could be considered one of the most significant contributors to the advancement of modern society. Evaluating air transport service quality is important as it is for the other public transport systems. Airport facilities and services are the first experiences that a passenger receives upon arrival. For this reason, providing airport services characterized by high levels of quality is very important to make the travel more pleasant for the passengers, with the final objective to attract more users. Therefore, measuring the levels of airport services by evaluating passengers’ satisfaction with them is essential to understand the needs of customers. In the same way, with the airlines’ deregulation the number of airlines entered into the air transport industry significantly increased, causing a stronger competition. In this context, it is evident that provided service quality, as well as passengers’ satisfaction, play an important role also in the airlines marketing strategies. While literature regarding the evaluation of road and rail public transport service quality is well established from many years, literature concerning air transport service quality is relatively recent. A first substantial issue that emerges from the air transport related literature concerns the complexity of the various characteristics of the services, which can relate to the airport managing companies and to the airlines. For this reason, the major part of the studies treats separately these two groups of service. Specifically, the researchers analysed air transport services by distinguishing the concerning the services offered in the airports from the ones provided by the airlines. The aim of this thesis work is to give a contribution to the existing literature, by applying various techniques and models for analysing both airport and airlines’ service quality. As suggested by the literature, also in this work the airport services have been treated separately by the airlines’ services. In fact, two different data samples were analysed. Specifically, the International airport of Lamezia Terme (Italy) has been considered as case study for the airport services. Otherwise, data collected by an online survey conducted at the University of Calabria (Italy) became object of study for the airlines’ services analyses. Several tools have been tested and proposed. The obtained results could be considered not only as a research contribution, but also as starting point to help air transport managers and providers in choosing the effective strategy for providing services characterized by adequate levels of quality.
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    New one-line model for shoreline evolution at beaches composed of not cohesive grains of any size
    (2020-02-18) Francone, Antonio; Furgiuele, Franco; Tomasicchio, Giuseppe Roberto; Frega, Ferdinando;
    Over recent decades, efforts have been made to find robust methods for predicting shoreline evolution near to the coastal structures. This requires a rigorous understanding of the key coastal processes that drive sediment transport, and how they are impacted by the presence of structures. Once this understanding is reached, a method for predicting morphological shoreline evolution is required. In this context, numerical modelling plays an important role. A new one-line model for shoreline evolution at beaches composed of not cohesive grains of any size is proposed: the General Shoreline beach (GSb). GSb model is based on the one-line theory, for which it is assumed that the equilibrium beach profile remains unchanged (Dean, 1990), thereby allowing beach change to be described uniquely in terms of the shoreline position. The longshore sediment transport rate is estimated by means of a general formula/procedure (Tomasicchio et al., 1994; Lamberti and Tomasicchio, 1997; Tomasicchio et al., 2013; Tomasicchio et al., 2015) combining an energy flux approach with an empirical/statistical relationship between the waveinduced forcing and the number of moving units. The uniqueness of the proposed new one-line model consists in the possibility to simulate beach change, including the effects of coastal structures (i.e. groynes, detached breakwaters), at a mound composed of not cohesive grains of any size, from sand to rock units. Despite other existing models, the GSb model presents a calibration factor, KGSb solely and it has been calibrated and verified against field and laboratory data on sandy and mixed beach (sand and gravel) referring to simple groyne and detached breakwater (Ming and Chiew, 2000; Hamilton et al., 2001; Martin-Grandes et al., 2009; Medellin et al., 2018;). Optimal values of KGSb, valid for different types of not cohesive grains and coastal structures, have been reported. It is showed that the GSb model can be considered a reliable engineering tool to conduct morphodynamics studies. A demo version of the GSb model, for Mac and Windows systems, has been released for the scientific community and is available at www.scacr.eu.
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    Analisi del comportamento non-lineare dei materiali compositi con microstruttura periodica
    (2009) Sgambittera, Girolamo; Olivito, Renato Sante; Bruno, Domenico; Greco, Fabrizio
    In the present thesis the macroscopic non-linear behavior of composite materials with a periodic and heterogeneous microstructure is studied. There are many different kinds of phenomena that produce non-linear effects in composite materials, for example intralaminar damage, delamination and microbucking in fiber reinforced composite or micro-cracking in cellular materials. In this work attention is devoted to the mechanical modeling of nonlinear phenomena associated to the presence of micro-cracks in the context of linear elasticity and of microscopic instabilities in the framework of the finite strain theory. Applications have been developed with reference to microstructures of cellular type and with embedded inclusions. The thesis is structured according to the following chapters: -In the first chapter the fundamental concepts of the finite strains theory are recalled. The constitutive relations associated to a class of conjugate stress-strain pairs are introduced. The basic expressions of the incremental constitutive laws are shown with special reference to incrementally linear constitutive laws. Finally the stability and the uniqueness of the equilibrium solution are analyzed. -In the second chapter, after an introduction about the homogenization techniques, the micro and macro stability phenomena occurring in composite materials with a periodic microstructure are studied from a theoretical point of view in the context of the finite strains theory. The formulation starts from a variational formulation of the problem. Novel macroscopic measures of micro-structural stability are introduced corresponding to the positive definiteness of the homogenized moduli tensors relative to a class of conjugate stress-strain pairs and their effectiveness to obtain a conservative prediction of the microscopic primary instability load is pointed out. Analysis of these stability phenomena plays a fundamental role because often the collapse of composite materials with periodic microstructure is related to microstructural instabilities. In addition the microscopic stability analysis establishes the region of validity of the standard homogenization procedure based on the unit cell procedure. -In the third chapter, in the context of the small strains theory, non-linear phenomena are presented with reference to composite materials with a porous microstructure containing micro-cracks spreading from the voids. The fundamental techniques of homogenization are applied in conjunction with fracture mechanics theory and interface models. The energy release rate is evaluated through the J-integral technique. -In the fourth chapter some numerical applications carried out by means of a one-way coupled finite element code, are proposed. In the first section the numerical results will be introduced with reference to the theoretical aspects developed in the second chapter. Numerical analyses are addressed to composite materials with a periodic microstructure, namely a porous microstructure and a particle-reinforced microstructure. The adopted constitutive law is hyperelastic. Periodic boundary conditions will be used for the microstructure, and uniaxial and equibiaxial loading conditions are considered. Numerical analyses are able to show the exact region of microscopic stability, obtained by taking into account all the microstructural details, and the region of macroscopic stability, determinate by studying homogenized material properties. To elaborate macroscopic criteria able to give a conservative prediction of the microstructural stability, different measures of macroscopic instability are introduced with reference to work conjugate strain-stress measures. In the second section of this chapter a numerical analyses with reference to the micromechanical model proposed in the third chapter is developed. In this case the microstructure adopted for the composite materials is a cellular microstructure in which there is the presence of two micro-cracks advancing symmetrically from the void. The microstructure is subjected to three different boundary conditions namely respectively: linear displacements, periodic fluctuations and antiperiodic tractions and uniform tractions. The objective of this section is to verify the validity of the homogenization technique in the prediction of micro-crack evolution phenomena, for composites with locally periodic microstructure. The energy release rate obtained through the micromechanical model will be compared with a 2D composite structure composed by a regular arrangement of 5x5 unit cells. The composite structure is subjected to two different boundary conditions: the former is associated with the absence of contact between the surfaces of the micro-cracks, on the contrary in the latter case there is the presence of the contact. This type of comparison allows to investigate the accuracy of the proposed procedure in presence of macroscopic tension and strain gradients.
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    40° N sole e contesto nella progettazione di spazi urbani mediterranei
    (2009) Carbone, Ivana; Rossi, Franco; Cannavò, Paola