The challenge of preserving heritage buildings in earthquake –prone areas

Dr. Ing. Rafael Aguilar, Sección de Ingenieria Civil, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Hopeman 224

The conservation of heritage buildings is of major importance for preserving the scientific, ethnographic and artistic values of past cultures. Conservation and restoration works in these types of buildings are often focused on aesthetic aspects or on solving specific problems. In earthquake-prone areas, the character of the intervention is not the same and detailed structural analysis studies using up-to-date experimental and numerical techniques are of extreme importance. Two case studies will be presented aiming at showing the seismic assessment of earthen structures. The first one deals with the first round of on-site investigations and numerical analysis applied to the archaeological complex of Huaca de la Luna, an emblematic and massive adobe construction located in Trujillo, a northern city of Peru (built from 100 AD to 650 AD). The second one is related to the structural modeling and the seismic assessment of the Andahuaylillas church, a 17th Century church located in Cusco, Andes of Peru. The research in this case is based on in-situ tests and subsequent numerical modeling for evaluating the overall response of the church.