JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE OF GAZI UNIVERSITY, vol.27, no.1, pp.211-217, 2012 (SCI-Expanded)
Historical monuments erode either slowly by the decay of time or swiftly by the stroke of natural disasters. No single discipline, whether they are architectural historians, architects or structural engineers can prevent this destruction by themselves. It should be recognized that these disciplines all have very elaborate and specialized working and research methods of their own. Any lack of cooperation between these disciplines will seriously hinder the preservation efforts. It is crucial for a healthy preservation process that architects and architectural historians have a very basic level of information about the structural behavior of historical buildings. This is the only way they can suggest preservation methods that will not damage the historical and artistic qualities of the building. The aim of this paper is to clarify the structural behavior of historical buildings and render the numerical analyses methods easily understandable for architects and architectural historians.