BEHAVIOUR OF GREEK COLUMNS DURING EARTHQUAKES WITH AND WITHOUT TENDON SYSTEM

The protection of cultural heritage, like Greek Temples, is of extreme importance if we want to keep them for future generations. Although these temples have survived some strong earthquakes, they now lay in ruins that can be visited in archaeological parks. In order to be able to preserve them and improve the security for tourists, we need to understand their seismic behaviour and apply the “right” retrofitting methods that not only protect the structure, but also have a minimum impact on the visual appearance and can also be removed. However, due to lack of understanding of the response of antique column structures under earthquake, it is not possible to decide which structures need to be retrofitted nor which technology is feasible. A collaborative project between the University of Kassel (UNIKA), Germany and Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy is focused on answering these questions, using as structural example the Greek Temple of Neptune in Paestum, Italy (World Heritage Site) and the tendon system as a retrofitting technique. For such a large structures, the only reasonable way to validate the non-linear numerical model is by using Hybrid Simulation.