AN ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING APPROACH TO COLLECT FIELD INFORMATION FOR THE SEISMIC RETROFITTING OF HISTORIC EARTHEN BUILDINGS IN PERU

During the 1990s, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) investigated the seismic performance of historic adobe structures in California and developed retrofit methods that preserved their authenticity. Following the 2007 Pisco earthquake in Peru, the GCI partnered with the Ministerio de Cultura del Peril, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peril, and the University of Bath to form the Seismic Retrofitting Project in Peru. The project aims to design and test historical and new retrofitting techniques using numerical modeling analysis, as well as dynamic and static testing; provide guidance for those responsible for implementation; and, work with authorities to gain acceptance of these techniques. In-depth analyses were performed for four Peruvian buildings representative of typologies in the region. The selected buildings include the nineteenth-century, three-story adobe and quincha Hotel El Comercio in Lima and the seventeenth-century, two-story adobe Casa Arones in Cusco. Two religious structures were also selected: the seventeenth-century, adobe Church of Kuno Tambo near Cusco, and the Cathedral of Ica, built in 1759 with adobe walls and quincha pillars, vaults, and domes and heavily damaged by earthquakes in 2007 and 2011. This paper presents the general project methodology and describes how different disciplines worked together to prepare a construction assessment for the selected building prototypes that analyzed their construction details and material conditions. The paper also establishes a set of guidelines to define the necessary information to be collected in the field as part of a construction assessment to properly develop numerical modeling analyses and their complementary laboratory testing.