Seismic analysis of a building block

This paper reports on the study of the seismic response of an urban building block located in Faial, a town of the Horta Island of the Azores, Portugal. The work fits within the framework of studying strengthening schemes suitable for the reconstruction process of a town damaged by an earthquake action and includes numerical modelling of all the building blocks with calibration of material and structural parameters based on ambient vibration tests. The study aims at understanding a number of issues that are likely to influence the global behaviour of the block and the local response of individual buildings, namely the group effect of adjacent constructions, the in-plane stiffness of floors and/or roofs and the presence of possible localized strengthening interventions in selected parts of the block.