Author(s)

C. Limoge Schraen, C. Giry, C. Desprez, F. Ragueneau

Abstract

The preservation of architectural heritage against natural hazards, especially seismic risks, is extremely challenging. Countries presenting a medium seismic risk like France still want to protect this particularly sensitive but also numerous heritage. Our research work therefore seeks to meet those two requirements. Firstly the large-scale of the study deals with a large number of buildings to be diagnosed across the studied region. Furthermore we need to propose a relevant analysis of the seismic behaviour of masonry historic structures, by inexpensive ways. We rely on studying the rich heritage of vernacular Baroque churches and chapels in the highest valleys of French Savoye. We first present the choices we made and the tools we developed to meet the identified requirements. Then we develop how we used ambient noise measurements in order to calibrate and validate initial models of unfamiliar complex structures. Finally we explain how we defined a damage threshold criterion by comparing different approaches, numerical and kinematics.

Keywords

masonry, seismic vulnerability, ambient vibrations testing, numerical modelling