Seismic Retrofit Measures for Masonry Walls of Historical Buildings, from an Energy Saving Perspective

The planning of energy saving and structural retrofit interventions on masonry buildings are usually two separate projects; combined interventions are rare. Solutions tackling both aspects can reduce total refurbishment costs and improve global building performance. However, heavy interventions on the envelope have to be carefully designed in order to improve both seismic and energy performance whilst mitigating environmental impact. National energy saving regulations are generally less strict for historical buildings, making this category of buildings very interesting not only because of their widespread diffusion across Italy but also because of the possibility of planning interventions that will allow significant improvements by combining building efficiency and safety. This research looks at these aspects and proposes new methods for refurbishing masonry buildings combining seismic improvements and energy saving interventions. Among those mostly commonly applied on masonry buildings in Italy, and described in this paper, are various combined retrofit interventions, and we report the results of these interventions on thermal transmittance reduction and global costs.