Seismic evaluation of Romanian traditional buildings with timber frame and mud masonry infills by in-plane static cyclic tests

Selected Aspects Regarding the Restoration/Conservation of Traditional Wood and Masonry Building Materials: A Short Overview of the Last Decade Findings

“…Another important aspect for the restoration/conservation of traditional buildings is represented by the engineering assessment of the construction, including the differentiation between the structural and the decorative materials, which opens different treatment routes. For example, in the case of structural materials, the recovery of the material's functionality is mandatory, while for decorative materials, is only necessary the maintaining of their integrity [3,113,151]. If this is not possible, the natural stones can be replaced with natural stones with the same characteristics, or with cast stones, designed to replicate the natural ones [152].…”

“…These constructions are specific to each nation and region, considering a multitude of factors, including climate and availability of materials [1], without any one of them being decisive. Traditional buildings were usually constructed using the materials at hand, including wood, natural stone and bricks (either clay or mud bricks) [2,3]. All those materials are exposed to a series of environmental factors, affecting their structure and integrity.…”

Reply on RC2

“…A synthesis (Rotaru and Răileanu, 2009) of the damages caused in the 2000-2005 period by rains, hail, strong winds, and landslides in Iaşi County revealed losses estimated at 37 million RON (around 11.5 million Euro at that date). Also, a constant threat to the life of people and their dwelling stock is represented by earthquakes: Iaşi County was the most affected by the 7.1 MW subcrustal earthquake from 1997 in terms of total affected dwelling stock (Georgescu and Pomonis, 2008) and remain one of the most vulnerable to seismic hazard in Romania (Bunea and Atanasiu, 2014;Dutu et al, 2018) In order to differentiate the administrative units and, as a consequence, different risk perception of the interviewees based on geographic location in the major landforms of the study area, the communes in which the present study was carried out have been split into two categories: (i) floodplain communes, located mainly on the major floodplains in the area (Prut, Jijia and Bahlui floodplains) and (ii) hilly communes, with a large development of slopes and associated geomorphological processes: landslides and soil erosion (Fig. 1).…”

Structural Vulnerability Assessment of Heritage Timber Buildings: A Methodological Proposal

“…Several experimental tests have been carried out to investigate the behavior of full-scale structures using shaking tables (see e.g., Figure 7a) or sub-structures subjected to lateral loadings [79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94]. At the component scale, for log houses and timber frame buildings, cyclic or monotonic tests have been performed on shear walls as the lateral load-bearing system, while in post and beam systems with beam-column connections that resist lateral loads, the connections are simulated as illustrated in Figure 7b,c.…”