Seismic Response of Hagia Sophia Church in Thessaloniki Including Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction

This study investigates the behavior of “Hagia Sophia” church in Thessaloniki under seismic loading. It is one of the greatest Byzantine churches in the city and it is inscribed on the World Heritage List. The main scope of this work is to estimate the seismic response of the historic structure accounting for the actual foundation and soil flexibility at its base, to find the locations in need for retrofit and finally, to propose possible intervention methods. We simulate numerically the soil - foundation -structure system, and for the properties of the building materials we estimate their strengths with the use of two codes; the EC6 and the Greek Regulation for the structural intervention of masonry (KADET). We simulate soil-foundation flexibility using impedance functions under the foundation according to NIST (2012) provisions. The influence of soil–foundationstructure interaction is investigated. As a reference case, we also consider a fixed-base model to compare the output of the two analyses and highlight the influence of the soil and masonry foundation flexibility on the dynamic response of the church. Finally, we further analyze the intervention method of micropiles as a possible method of enhancement for the foundation of the monumen