Abstract
Loess cave dwellings are the most typical style of regional architecture in northwest China; now, there are still tens of millions of people living in them. The northwest is an earthquake-prone area, and cave dwellings have suffered a lot of damage in previous moderate and strong earthquakes, so their earthquake resistance has attracted people’s attention. At present, the seismic analysis of aboveground building structures is relatively mature, while the seismic analysis of loess cave dwellings is less researched. To study the seismic response of loess cave dwellings, a single-hole cliff-side loess cave dwelling located in Yangjialing revolution former sites of Yan’an City of northwest China was investigated and surveyed; the three-dimensional numerical model was established by MIDAS/GTS NX. Combining the historic earthquake damage investigation, dynamic time-history analysis of the single-hole loess cliff-side cave dwelling subject to four horizontal earthquake actions was conducted to determine the weak positions, failure characteristics, and the corresponding displacement and stress of the loess cave dwelling under earthquake load. The results show that the loess has an amplification effect on the seismic waves, the arch vault is a key factor to the stability of the loess cave dwellings, the cliff-side loess cave dwellings in an 8-degree area cannot be used to continue living, and the entrance to loess cave dwellings is the most dangerous place when the earthquake happens.
Highlights
On the loess plateau of northwest China, as influenced by economic conditions, climatic environment, and geological features, as a kind of vernacular architecture, loess cave dwelling has been sprung up greatly here and even became the main form of rural dwellings in northern Shaanxi
In recent years, the climatic conditions of Yan’an have been changed; especially in summer and autumn, the precipitation is increased sharply; the continuous rainfall causes the cave damaged or even collapsed, which makes a serious threat to the lives and property safety of the occupants, especially for those loess cave dwellings built on the unfavorable geological conditions, such as loess slope and gully zone
We explored the numerical modeling of the single-hole cliff-side loess cave dwelling dynamic timehistory response to seismic motions, determined the horizontal displacement, horizontal acceleration, stress and strain, the weak positions, failure characteristics of the loess cave dwellings under four horizontal earthquake actions with Midas/GTS geotechnical finite element analysis software
Summary
On the loess plateau of northwest China, as influenced by economic conditions, climatic environment, and geological features, as a kind of vernacular architecture, loess cave dwelling has been sprung up greatly here and even became the main form of rural dwellings in northern Shaanxi. Chen et al [17] summarized the historical earthquake damage experience of the cave dwellings on the loess precipice, proposed the estimation method of the critical height of cliff slope in the earthquake, and conducted a preliminary study on the cliff-side cave’s seismic performance. Based on the cliff-side loess cave dwelling located in the Yan’an revolutionary old site of northern Shaanxi, this study utilizes the geotechnical finite element software MIDAS/NX to build a three-dimensional finite element model, applies the 4-node three pyramid unit, uses the viscous element boundary to simulate the boundary of dynamic analysis, applies the artificial seismic waves, and adopts the linear time-history analysis with direct integration to solve the seismic response. According to the finite element results, the forces and deformations of the single-hole cliff-side loess cave dwellings are analyzed under the action of earthquakes, and the weak positions and damage characteristics are determined under earthquake action, which is of great significance to earthquake prevention and disaster mitigation work and protection and reinforcement
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