Sustainability in the strengthening process of the load-bearing historical structures

Preservation of the load-bearing historical structures represents a common research topic nowadays, as it stands a provocative and difficult task. At the same time, sustainability represents a concept of high interest in the light of recent climate change events, a concept that has become a responsibility in the past years. Safeguarding of the historical buildings with heritage value is an obligation of society to be able to pass on to future generations the historical cultural value of the buildings and the traditional construction techniques on which they were built. Nowadays, many historical buildings are consolidated with modern reversible materials and technologies, without attempting a sustainable consolidation with local traditional materials using the original building techniques and local building materials, which have already proved their effectiveness in the past. This article presents the sustainable consolidation methods proposed to consolidate the historic building of the Villa Abbatis guesthouse in the village of Apos, Sibiu County, Romania. The proposed consolidation techniques use bricks that are manufactured according to traditional method in a recently built brickworks and reuse existing building materials in the building and from abandoned buildings after the departure of ethnic Germans from Romania until 1990. The aim of this paper is to highlight the value of the traditional materials and technologies, that can bring in the retrofitting process not only the assurance of the bearing capacity, but also the preservation of the authenticity and sustainability of the entire process, in a holistic approach

Effect of Historic Timber Roof Structures on the Structural Behaviour of Masonry Buildings during Seismic Events

Roofs are complex elements of heritage structures which are not only meant to protect the building from exterior methodological factors but are also defining the skyline of a city while highlighting the importance and aesthetics of the building they belong to. However, in seismic areas, roof structures prove out to either trigger the out-of-plane behaviour of historic masonry buildings [1] or reduce the horizontal displacement, depending on their type and their connection to the masonry walls [2]. The study is therefore aiming do highlight the effect of common roof structure types from Timisoara, a city placed in the western part of Romania, subjected to shallow earthquakes, on the seismic behaviour of a local type of masonry structure, with a ground-floor and 2 upper floors, from the 18th century. Throughout the study, three different types of roof structures were placed on the same masonry building and the out-of-plane horizontal displacement, inter-story drift, damage level and internal forces were assessed. The main scope of the study is to highlight how the chosen roof structures from the 18th, 19th and 20th century, would influence the behaviour of a masonry building during seismic events. Detailed numerical simulations using finite element models of the building and the three roof structures were performed in order to obtain the four assessed parameters, which prove that, depending on the connection to the masonry walls and the state of conservation of the timber elements, roof structures would significantly improve the seismic behaviour of historic masonry buildings in this area

Consolidation methods of Romanian historical building with composite materials

Timisoara is a growing city in the western part of Romania, in a seismic area, with a lot of masonry buildings with historical and cultural value, with interesting structural elements such as vaults, arches, slabs, walls, that were affected by earthquakes, subsidence of foundations, negative human actions or lack of interventions. Masonry historical structures in Banat seismic area present particular failure mechanisms, so there is a need for new, modern, fast, easy-to-apply and reversible consolidation methods. With this type of methods is possible to assure the local and global resistance, ductility, stability and rigidity for historical buildings. This article shows the consolidation methods that were applied on the buildings Sf. Gheorghe 3 and 4, in the historical centre of Timisoara, on masonry structures with historical value. The solutions that were applied are using new, innovative fibre-reinforced composite materials, in order to repair the existing damages and prevent further ones. The consolidation solutions with these new composite materials reduce the buildings vulnerability and present the advantage of being fast and easy to be executed

Seismic Vulnerability Assessment and Loss Estimation of an Urban District of Timisoara

The seismic risk evaluation of built-up areas is associated to the level of earthquake hazard, building vulnerability and level of exposure. It is well known that the large-scale vulnerability assessment is a very important topic for the protection of historical buildings and the mitigation of effects of natural phenomena on the built-up. In 2020 Timisoara will be the capital of European Culture and, therefore, the knowledge of the number of unusable and collapsed buildings under possible earthquakes is a crucial point to plan suitable future intervention strategies from structural and urban points of view. Based on these premises, the proposed research is conducted in collaboration with the University of Naples "Federico II" with the main purpose to focus on the seismic vulnerability evaluation of buildings located within an urban-sector of Timisoara through the EMS-98 macro-seismic approach. First of all, the typological vulnerability classes of buildings according to the RISK-UE method have been defined in order to classify them from typological and structural viewpoints. Subsequently, a vulnerability form appropriately conceived for masonry aggregates has been filled for the study area buildings and the typological fragility functions have been derived for them aiming at identifying the most vulnerable constructions. Finally, parametric analysis has been carried out by varying the seismic magnitude and site-source distance in order to estimate the seismic loss estimation under earthquakes

Seismic vulnerability assessment of a Romanian historical masonry building under near-source earthquake

In the present research work, the effect of ground motion vertical component in case of near-source excitations on masonry buildings has been analysed. To this purpose, an investigation has been made on the Banloc Castle, a historical masonry construction damaged by the Banat-Voiteg earthquake occurred on December 1991 in the Romanian Region of Banloc. A FEM model of the building, setup using DIANA FEA analysis software, has been analysed in the non-linear dynamic field. In particular, the records have been referred to the Banloc site, characterized by a moment magnitude of 5.5 and a focal depth of 9 km. In order to estimate the influence of the vertical seismic motion on the case study building in terms of both displacement and internal forces, two different scenarios have been examined. The first scenario has taken into account the horizontal component only, whereas the second one has studied the simultaneous effects of three components of the seismic action. The comparison between the two scenarios has shown that the vertical ground motion significantly modifies the structural behaviour of the inspected building. Finally, numerical damage patterns have been plotted and compared to the real cracks detected in the case study after the considered seismic event.(undefined

Conservation, consolidation and restoration of the Holy Annunciation Church, Vatasesti village, region of Oltenia, Romania - Architectural and structural particularities

The present article discusses the process of architectural and structural diagnosis of a late 18th century, brick masonry built, Christian church located in Vătășești village, Vâlcea county, Romania, presenting the particularities discovered. The church is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and The Holy Annunciation and it is listed under the LMI code (List of historical monuments of Romania) VL-II-m-B-09968. Its registration in the list of historical monuments inscribed in the National Cultural Heritage of Romania was realized especially thanks to its original byzantine style mural paintings (frescoes) still left almost intact on the interior walls, the only serious damage made to it being found on the paintings once found on the outside walls. In order to properly conserve, consolidate and restore the vernacular monument, the process of diagnosis had to include research and investigations of various and complementary areas such as 3D scanning using laser scan technology, the archaeological report, the mural paintings restoration experts report, the chemical analysis of the painted surface, the biological analysis of different materials, humidity reports, stratigraphy research, the geological and topographical reports, the compression strength of bricks test and structural analysis using 3D modelling and the Etabs software. The materials and techniques used for the consolidation and restoration works had to be non-invasive, ecological and reversible, using steel nets and hydraulic lime for the consolidation of the brick masonry. The architectural interventions on the drainage system, facades, roof, interior floors, lighting system, and all the interventions that the article describes were subordinated by the need to preserve and highlight the Romanian orthodox frescoes that give great value to the monument. This article explains the importance of proper research and measurements ought to be done in order to have a well-coordinated process later, designing the consolidation and restoration project

Modern Consolidation Methods for Catholic Church in Baroque Style from Arad Fortress, Romania

This paper presents the results of a study carried on a baroque style Catholic Church, in the field of determining its bearing capacity, restored with reversible materials, technologies and consolidation methods. The Franciscan Monastery is situated in Arad fortress and is an historical building. The structural resistance of the building suffered severe degradation because of the poor maintenance over the years. Two nonlinear analyses were made on the structure that showed that the building may suffer severe structural damage after an earthquake. Based on the results of these analyses some consolidation methods were proposed for the structural elements of the building: walls, arches, vaults, pillars, towers and foundations. Then a third analysis was made using the proposed consolidation methods to determine their efficiency

Integrated Empirical-mechanical Seismic Vulnerability Analysis Method for Masonry Buildings in Timișoara: Validation based on the 2009 Italian Earthquake

Background: Timisoara is one of the most important Romanina cities, located in the Banat area and characterised by shallow earthquakes with high ground motion vertical component. The seismicity of the area, in accordance with the P-100 Romanian Code, is affected by medium-high hazard level with an expected maximum PGA of 0.20 g. From a historical-artistic point of view, the city of Timisoara is full of monumental buildings of inestimable values and it was declared as the European Capital of Culture for 2021. Aims: The present work aims to investigate the seismic vulnerability of masonry buildings located in the districts of Fabric and Iosefin, which were grouped in typology classes based on the EMS-98 scale according to their geometrical and structural characteristics. Methods: The performed vulnerability analysis is based on a combined empirical-mechanical procedure to estimate the propensity at the damage of the buildings surveyed. Results: A specific formulation was proposed for typological vulnerability curves of building classes of the examined area, which were calibrated on the basis of the damages detected after occurred earthquakes. Conclusion: The proposed formulation was validated from the application to an urban sector of the municipality of San Pio delle Camere (Italy), which was damaged after the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake