The non-smooth tale of accumoli civic tower

In this study, the Civic Tower of Accumoli and the Palazzo of Podestà, damaged by the Central Italy earthquake, are examined. The main goal is to understand the damage evolution during the 2016 seismic sequence. To this end, two modeling strategies, one continuous and one discontinuous, were used. The numerical models have undergone non-linear dynamic analysis considering the three main tremors recorded close to the village. The non-linear masonry behavior was simulated by the concrete damage plasticity model (CDP) in the continuous model and by the non-smooth contact dynamics (NSCD) and the discrete element (DE) method in the discontinuous approach. The results show that all the techniques identify the same vulnerable points. However, only the discontinuous ones permit us to precisely track the cracks that appeared.