The Impact of Secondary Cause of Deteriorations in More Destruction of Bam Citadel during the 2003 Bam Earthquake

During the 26 December 2003 of Bam earthquake, the Citadel of Bam (Arg-e Bam) as an outstanding exampleof a fortified medieval town in southeast of Iranian desert experienced a sever destruction, it was entirely built bytraditional construction technique of adobe. In Iran, there are many culturally significant adobe-mud brick structuresthat are located in an area with high seismic risk, where this vulnerable kind of Iranian national heritage are threaten bythe future earthquakes. Therefore, the protection of these ancestral heritages due to their local, national and internationalimportance is a solemn duty. In most of previous studies carried out in various fields related to damage analysis of BamCitadel during the earthquake, there are paid less attention to secondary causes of deterioration, factors that have had animportant contribution to further destruction of Bam’s architectural patrimonies. Hence, this paper intends to describethe background and characteristic of adobe-mud brick structures briefly, and later classifies the observed mechanism ofdeterioration in Bam Citadel into four primary causes (human effects, biological effects, inherent effects and naturaleffects), encompassing each a number of secondary factors. In fact, with this study we can get a complete resourceabout the norms of deterioration of adobe-mud brick structures in Bam citadel, so far as is reasonably practicable, theresult can be generalized for other similar cases in Iran where by their consideration the impact of earthquake will besubstantially reduced.

Keywords:

Adobe-Mud Brick Structures , Bam Citadel , Deterioration Factors , Earthquake