Seismic Behavior of Mexican Colonial Churches

ABSTRACT

During the past two decades, it is growing the interest to study the seismic behavior of old masonry churches in Latin America. The architectural heritage has been seriously damaged by the earthquake activity. The interest to preserve this kind of structures has motivated the study of their dynamical behavior and their seismic vulnerability. The out-of-plane failure of the facade is a frequently damage pattern after strong seismic events in many churches, principally in churches with a gable roof like many churches in Europe. However, in the old masonry churches built in Latin-America and especially in Mexico, the out-of-plane behavior is generally less important and is only regarded with the detachment of the facade from the nave, but without reach the collapse. To understand the reason that the out-of-plane behavior is less important in old Mexican churches, a study of the seismic behavior of this kind of structures was performed. A typical Mexican colonial church was analyzed under different assumptions. It was concluded that the use of masonry vault system, instead of wooden roof helps to reduce the out-of-plane failure of the facade. As well as the towers provide a constraint that reduces the movement out-of-plane, but also increase the in-plane actions, and are also committed themselves to a combined bending and torsion stress.

KEYWORDS:

• churches
• in-plane behavior
• masonry
• out-of-plane behavior
• seismic analysis