Mazzolani Visits The MAE Center
On Friday August 21, Professor Federico Mazzolani of the Structural Engineering Department at the University of Naples - Federico II visited the Mid-America Earthquake Center. He met with Professors Abrams, Hajjar, LaFave and Elnashai. He also met with Professor Di Sarno from Benevento who is on a short summer visit to CEE@Illinois, working with Professor Elnashai. Professor Mazzolani also toured the Newmark Lab guided by Hussam Mahmoud, and the Smart Structures Technology Lab guided by David Bennier. He presented a seminar titled "Earthquake Protection of Historical Buildings". The seminar summarized the outcome of the research project PROHITECH aimed at using reversible mixed technologies for the development of sustainable methodologies for the seismic protection of existing historical and monumental buildings. Finite element models were developed and used for identifying critical details in the structures and for the selection of the earthquake record used in scaled shake-table tests. The scaled tests were conducted to evaluate the seismic performance of the existing structures and the effectiveness of the various proposed prototype retrofits. PROHITECH was sponsored by the European Commission from the period of 2004-2008, involving 15 academic institutions of 12 Countries and was led by Prof. Mazzolani. Professors Mazzolani and Elnashai discussed cooperation between their research groups and a researcher exchange was agreed
upon. The exchange is likely to start during the spring 2010 semester when a researcher from Napoli will spend a few months in Urbana.
