Historic timber roof structures: Value and influence on the seismic behavior of heritage buildings

Historic timber roof structures are complex systems built according to the knowledge of carpenters. Still, besides the technical knowledge of the craftsman, the shape and choice of roof structure type was significantly influenced by the context of the building, the neighboring buildings and ultimately to the surrounding area. Today, due to that deterioration of the timber elements, increasing environmental risks and changing demands of the inhabitants, timber roof structures have to be fully assessed in order to develop proper conservation and intervention strategies. However, recent studies concerning the assessment of historic timber structures, only evaluate them from a single point of view, either structural (type, load-bearing capacity, state of conservation) or architectural (geometric, aesthetic) without assessing them as o complete system. Therefore, based on different historic roof structures, built between the 19th and 20th century, from Timisoara, the study is aiming to present a more complex way of assessing historic timber roof structures by taking their value from all points of view into consideration. In the same time, since historic timber roof structures improve the structural behavior of heritage buildings during seismic events, the study proposes to evaluate the influence of the assessed roof structure types on the seismic behavior and out-of-plane failure mechanism of heritage buildings, by means of finite element structural models. In this way, this factor can be introduced in new complex assessment methodologies and ultimately influence the value and vulnerability of historic roof structures.