Seismic engineering of monuments

Abstract

In this lecture the particularities of the seismic re-design of Monuments are discussed, related to their structural repair or strengthening. A Monument, besides its possible practical use and its economical value, requires a lot of other Values to be respected during its aseismic retrofitting, such as its aesthetic Form, the authenticity of its materials, etc. In order to respect these Values, the Engineer tends to minimize structural intervention—thus, violating social values such as the preservation of the Monument for future generations, the protection of human lifes, etc. An optimization is needed, and the lecture attempts to describe the necessary procedures to this end. On the other hand, emphasis is given to the particular difficulties in the determination of the resistance of masonry, as well as in the selection of suitable methods of Analysis, taking into account the specificity of each Monument. To this end, the lecture includes comments on monumentic Values and performance requirements, and emphasizes the need for an institutionalization of levels of importance, levels of visitability and of acceptable damage-levels for all monuments of each Country, as a basic input of aseismic design of monuments. Subsequently, criteria are given for the selection of methods of Analysis, and detailed comments are included about experimental investigations and strengths’ determination. The final optimization procedure is then described, regarding the optimum seismic resistance level to be lent to a specific Monument.