Seismic Performance of Historical Buildings Based on Discrete Element Method: An Adobe Church

This article presents the main concepts and the application of the discrete element method (DEM) for evaluating the seismic performance of historical buildings. Furthermore, the out-of-plane behavior of an adobe church with thick walls, in which the morphology of the cross-section can have an influence on the response, was evaluated by the DEM. The performance of rigid and deformable blocks models was compared, and the sensitivity of the numerical model to the variation of critical parameters was investigated. The results allowed the identification of the most vulnerable elements and a proposal of recommendations for reducing the seismic vulnerability.