Some Remarks Regarding Seismic Vulnerability for Orthodox Churches

Abstract

The high number of historical monuments in our country draws attention over the importance of rehabilitation and conservation works that need to be carried out in order to prevent their damage. The global concern regarding the conservation of world heritage is obvious if the ongoing projects would be considered. Integrated Rehabilitation and Research on Architectural and Archaeological Heritage (IRPP/SAAH) is one of the main projects in this field, in which a priority list was made containing 186 architectural monuments and archaeological sites from nine participating countries, which need to be rehabilitated. The main purpose of this paper is to realize an analysis of the seismic vulnerability of masonry orthodox churches located in Moldavia region. Old masonry structures were considered and a comparison between the three main types of churches was realized-churches with rectangular, trefoil or Greek cross plan configuration. Structural vulnerability for the considered typologies was assessed based on nonlinear static analysis (pushover). Vulnerability and fragility curves for the analyzed structures were plotted based on the results and on the well-known methodology. Due to their particularities, these churches may cause problems regarding human evacuation in case of earthquake, resulted or not in partial collapse of the structure. For this reason the paper discusses the possibility of reducing the risk of casualties caused by the vulnerability in case of a mass gathering of people. In this respect, numerical simulations were performed for the evacuation time required in relation to a certain level of structural response to a seismic action, for the three types of the considered structures.