1st Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 1CroCEE 2021

The paper gives an overview of recent developments in the field of seismic assessment of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings, drawing mainly from researches and coordinated projects recently carried out mostly in Italy. In particular, this work presents the latest findings on the available models and programs for the seismic assessment of masonry buildings, on the definition of rational criteria for the application of different strength expressions and on the evaluation of drift capacity of walls, specifically for the case of brick masonry. In order to investigate such aspects, a systematic comparison with past experimental data derived from in-plane cyclic tests on brick piers and its interpretation has been carried out. A recent benchmark study on different commercial software for seismic assessment of URM buildings has also been briefly presented. The findings of this study may provide a basis for the improvement of the codified approaches and a useful tool for professionals.