Keywords: Romanian historical masonry churches, seismic assessment, local failures, non-linear analyses

ABSTRACT 

The seismic events that hit Italy in the recent decades allowed us to comprehend the vulnerabilities of the historical built heritage and the fundamental role of prevention and safeguard strategies. This led us to study in detail the seismic performances of historical constructions in Europe. This work focuses on the built heritage in Romania, with particular attention to five Orthodox masonry churches located in the Banat region, whose structural configuration is characterized by the bell tower adjacent to the façade. In its first part, the typical bearing capacity of two churches based on the Romanian codes is presented. In this second part, we first compare the seismic performance of the five buildings and estimate a scale of intervention priorities through simplified risk assessment methods. Then, we present a more detailed investigation focused on one of the five churches, by means of global finite element non-linear analyses and assessment of local failures through adaptive limit analysis. The vertical seismic component for shallow earthquakes is also considered. The expected results concern the damage on the façade, affected by the presence of the bell tower, and the apse area, in agreement with the technical literature.