Keywords: Historical churches, seismic assessment, local failures, non-linear analyses, shallow earthquakes

ABSTRACT

The Banat seismic area in Romania is characterized by shallow earthquakes that generate in historic buildings different failure mechanisms compared to deep earthquakes. Religious buildings represent one of the most important historical buildings in Romania, with very interesting structures and beautiful architectural details, but many of them in a poor conservation state.

The failure mechanisms of the historical Romanian Baroque churches recorded after the earthquakes of 1990 and 1991 are due to the high value of the vertical components of the seismic action, the reduced number of cycles, and the strain rate.

The article presents the values of the seismic risk factor determined for two churches: Chizatau and Beregsau Mare with the ETABS software according to the Romanian design code P100-3 / 2019 in which the effects of the vertical seismic components are not taken into analysis.