Preliminary proposals for furnishing systems with life-saving function in seismic areas

Seismic events in recent years have shown that Italy possesses a very fragile heritage that is unsuitable for facing the stresses caused by earthquakes. In this context of real emergency, places like schools and offices, naturally subjected to crowding not typical of domestic environments, see a worsening of unfavorable conditions. Elements such as desks, bookcases, equipped walls or partitions are, most of the times, an obstacle, both for the safe exodus towards the escape routes on the part of the occupants and for hindering the post-event assistance, or an hazard, above all with regard to the vertically developed elements, such as bookcases or partition walls, which could overturn and consequently overwhelm the people in the immediate vicinity. The S.A.F.E. industrial research project aims to use these items as elements of safeguarding life, as elements of direct protection of people or elements of subsidy to the structure in which they are inserted, and guide for rescuers with the aid of technologically advanced instruments. This article presents the preliminary ideas, currently being developed within the S.A.F.E project, regarding the structural aspect. The properties and characteristics of typical buildings used as a project basis for the insertion of the furnishing elements are analyzed; the structural characteristics to be requested for the different elements constituting the single piece of furniture are evaluated, in terms of load-bearing capacity and energy dissipation following inertial actions or impacts; both the interaction between people and the object studied and the interaction between the piece of furniture and the building are analyzed, in order to obtain objects able on one side to act as life-saving elements, on the other to increase the performance of the structure in which they are placed, coming to conceive the set of furnishing elements as a coordinated system of protection.