Historic Buildings Under Earthquake Load

摘要

Due to their physical and geometrical complexity it is difficult to model historic buildings under seismic load. This is demonstrated by the example of the historic Aachen Cathedral which was the first German cultural monument to be included in the UNESCO cultural heritage list in 1978. After more than 1200 years of permanent use the static system of the cathedral showed considerable damage of the masonry structure and the medieval anchoring system. Therefore rehabilitation measures of the cathedral's load bearing system were carried out in the 20th century. Due to the location of the cathedral in a seismic active region an assessment of its seismic behaviour as presented in this paper became necessary. The investigations are based on a detailed finite element model of the cathedral which was calibrated by measurements of its natural frequencies. Numerical simulations were carried out both by the response spectrum method and by time history analyses. `