Evaluation of safety factor of selected ancient buildings in Iraq against earthquake loads

Environmental factors are affecting most of the archaeological sites in countries, and may sometimes lead to the demolition and destruction of these buildings, especially countries that lie on a seismic line. Therefore, it has become necessary to study the factors that help sustain and extend the life of these buildings. One of the most important of these factors is the safety factor, through which we obtain important information about the strength of archaeological buildings due to environmental loads such as earthquakes, winds, etc. The archaeological sites in Iraq and in the ancient city of Babylon were visited exclusively. We will start with a study (Babylonian Theatre, Ishtar Gate and Natmakh Temple) and the building materials and the bonding mortar were seen, as well as the measurements, dimensions and height for each site separately. It is no secret to anyone that the walls and ceilings of archaeological buildings in past and ancient countries and civilizations do not contain reconstituted or unreinforced concrete walls. Accordingly, this thesis focused on the study of the safety factor for the walls and ceilings of the site, as well as the bonding mortar between the building bricks by knowing the moment of overturning of the walls and their resistance to wall volatility, in addition to knowing the seismic shear force and the amount of resistance force of the bonding force against shear. On this basis, the information for each site was modeled using computer programs such as Etabs, and then the shear force was found, on which all engineering calculations focus to find the safety factor for each archaeological site. The results showed high resistance of bonding materials against the provided seismic shear loads and the safety factor was high for all these buildings.