Seismic behaviour of a precast industrial building employing ultra-long-span beams suspended on stay cables

Nowadays, the demand for industrial buildings accommodating long spans, once typical of exhibition halls or hangars, is increasing, mainly due to the evolution of the logistic sector. Whilst uncommon spans for such buildings were traditionally dealt with steel trusses, precast concrete solutions have been proposed since the ‘70s to cover this need, with current span limitations of up to 50 m for beams and 42 m for roof elements. This paper investigates the seismic performance of an unconventional prefabricated reinforced concrete system by analysing a case study building layout with beams spanning 72 m supported by stay cables. The structure, previously fully designed according to Eurocodes under static and seismic loading, was subjected to a series of non-linear dynamic time history analyses, considering a single accelerogram with PGA progressively scaled from 0.1g to 0.5g. The analysis highlighted the proper design procedure adopted, with limited drift and no plasticisation observed in any structural element or connection around the damage limit state, while only limited damage was noticed at the design PGA around the life safety limit state. The structural system attained incipient failure for bow effect of the antenna induced by second order moments in the direction transverse to the cables only for PGA as strong as 0.4g.