Investigating the seismic response of ancient multi-drum colonnades with two rows of columns using an object-oriented designed software

A software application, based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM), has been developed, using a modern object-oriented design and programming approach, in order to enable the effective simulation of multi-drum columns and colonnades under harmonic and earthquake excitations. This paper examines specifically colonnade systems with two rows of columns, one over the other, under various ground motions. The computed results show that the frequency content of the ground motion affects mostly the response. The displacements of the upper level columns in respect to the displacements of the lower level columns are affected more by the frequency content of the excitation.