Evaluation of the effect of compatible interventions applied to horizontal components of URM buildings with EFM and FEM models. The case of palazzo carraro in Noale (Italy)

URM buildings suffer generally of their weak vertical structure and absence of horizontal connections between the walls. Nevertheless, traditional building practice in Veneto plains, where poor soil conditions are extremely common, required to build very deformable and lightweight houses to adapt to differential foundation settlement. Such peculiar features must be considered in the restoration and adaption to present safety criteria of those buildings. Therefore, 'improvement' interventions as defined by Italian technical standards, rather than structural retrofitting, seems to be more appropriated for reducing both, the alteration of the seismic behavior and the structural weight on foundations. Thanks to the regularity, both in plan and in elevation, of this set of buildings, equivalent frame modeling (EFM) is a viable way to perform global analysis if compared to the complexities of a continuum finite element model (FEM). In the paper, two software will be used for the implementation of the EF model, i.e., TRE Muri and Midas GEN, and their results will be compared with a continuum FE model built with DIANA FEA. In the three models, global seismic behavior through pushover analyses, as the building is and after interventions, is explored. Structural interventions are intentionally limited to horizontal structures stiffening. The case study is represented by a medium sized building placed just outside the old town of Noale, in the metropolitan district of Venice (Italy), dating back to the XVII cent.