Hagia Sophia through a Close-Up Lens

Abstract

Hagia Sophia has exhibited architectural beauty and structural ingenuity for centuries. Despite the earthquakes, fires and deformations it has gone through, the building can still present the original design envisioned by the engineer-architects in Byzantine period. Throughout this thesis, it is aimed to look beyond these restorations and strengthenings to understand and observe the deformations due to static and dynamic loading. In order to get a sense of the deformations this building exhibits, a historical background of the earthquakes and restorations is given. A finite element model assuming an ideal geometry is used to look at the structural behavior of the building. Static and dynamic analyses are carried out to understand the vulnerabilities of the structure. Further crack and shear failure analyses are done on certain regions that are prone to damage more than the rest of the structure. Lastly, a visual analysis has been carried out with close-up photography and infrared thermography of the regions that are expected to exhibit certain failure modes. It has been found that due to the series of restorations the building has gone through, it is not possible to reenact the current condition of the structure, but the FE model provides reliable information to understand the structural system and observe the structure’s behavior when subjected to static and dynamic loading. It has been determined that the external supporting structures counteract the outward thrust of the central structure, but consequently exhibit tensile and shear failure.