ABSTRACT
The article is devoted to the issues of ensuring the mechanical safety of cultural heritage objects. There is a lack of attention paid to the engineering aspects of the preservation of monuments in the Russian legislation, which, when questions of mechanical safety arise, addresses restorers to general construction norms and rules that are unsuitable for monuments. The article proposes an approach to ensuring the mechanical safety of cultural heritage objects, considering the specific features of monuments in comparison with the objects of new construction. The article presents a logical analysis of the shortcomings of the existing building codes, which are manifested when they are applied to monuments. The work on the preservation of monuments is recommended to be built on the basis of the dialectical unity of two opposite requirements – on the one hand, on the unconditional provision of mechanical safety of the monument, otherwise, the monument may be lost, and, on the other hand, on the need to preserve its authenticity, the threat of loss of which may be the measures themselves to strengthen the monument. The authors of the article draw attention to the illegality of using the same approaches when assigning loads and impacts, reserve coefficients, and reliability in the calculation of structures and foundations of new construction objects and monuments. Monuments are proposed to be considered as objects, the performance of the structures of which has been tested by time. The approach outlined in the article is proposed to form the basis of regulatory documents on the issues of mechanical safety of monuments.
