Earthquake Simulation for Ancient Building Destruction

Abstract

Research on seismic simulations has been focused mainly on methodologies specially tailored for civil engineering. On the other hand, we have detected a certain lack of this kind of tools for interactive cultural heritage applications, where speed and plausibility are the main requirements to satisfy. We have designed a tool that allows to parameterize and recreate real earthquakes in an accurate, but simple way. Furthermore, we have focused our efforts on those users without much technical experience in geology or seismic simulation, such as historians, art historians, museum curators and other similar stakeholders. We have performed a series of tests over a set of ancient masonry buildings such as walls with their respective battlements, houses and a Romanesque church with structural simulation enabled, thus, allowing the coupling between the earthquake being simulated and the objects of interest. We show the feasibility of including earthquake simulations and structural stability into historical studies for helping the professionals to understand better those events of the past where an earthquake took place.