We study the signatures of different coronal heating regimes on the differential emission measure (DEM) of multi-stranded coronal loops by means of hydrodynamic simulations. We consider heating either uniformly distributed along the loops or localized close to the chromospheric footpoints, in both steady and impulsive conditions. Our simulations show that condensation at the top of the loop forms when the localized heating is impulsive with a pulse cadence time shorter than the plasma cooling time, and the pulse energy is below a certain threshold. A condensation does not produce observable signatures in the global DEM structure. Conversely, the DEM coronal peak is found sensitive to the pulse cadence time. Our simulations can also give an explanation of the warm overdense and hot underdense loops observed by TRACE, SOHO and Yohkoh. However, they are unable to reproduce both the transition region and the coronal DEM structure with a unique set of parameters, which outlines the need for a more realistic description of the transition region.
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