Evaluation of the Structural Safety of Historical Masonry Buildings: Fid-Bau Portal

Evaluation of the Structural Safety of Historical Masonry Buildings

Ünay, Ali İhsan

Structural stability problems due to the formation of cracks and local collapses are the governing criteria for the structural safety of historical masonry buildings. The character of these cracks can be studied by numerical analysis. Analytical studies of the structural preservation of historical structures have two aspects. Firstly, structural demand should be determined by a decisive structural analysis. Second, the strength capacity of the structural elements must be evaluated. A comparison of these two concluding stages results in the determination of the “ratio of safety.” In this paper, several steps of analytical study are proposed to evaluate the safety level of historical structures. Structural demand of any given structure can be determined by using finite element analysis, which can be used to single out the vulnerable parts of the structure. Then, an analytical method can be derived to calculate the strength capacity of these structural elements. In this method, the interaction relationship between bending moment and the axial force is generated by using the material properties of masonry. To illustrate the methods, a case study is performed on the Yivli Minaret in Antalya, Turkey, originally part of a Byzantine church converted into a mosque in 1230, and one of the oldest examples of multicupola construction in Anatolia.