Research On Experiments And Mechanical Characteristics Of Palace Type Of Chinese Ancient Timber Structure

Chinese ancient architecture occupies an important position in the world of buildings, especially for timber structures. After thousands years of development, timber structures are of huge data size, various and complex structure types and have rich scientific and cultural connotation. Experienced a series of earthquakes, there are still many ancient timber structures. This shows that the timber structure buildings have unique and excellent seismic resistances. Understanding structure types, construction characteristics and structural elements making up timber structures are of great importance. The dynamic response and failure characteristics under earthquake excitation are also needed to be investigated. These efforts will surely be significant to the analysis on seismic behaviors and earthquake prevention of ancient timber structures. Furthermore these efforts will provide useful guidelines on optimum protection and maintenance of ancient Chinese structures.We now know that the earliest records of specific structural forms are palace structure, hall structure, and cluster angle beam structure recorded in the Yingzao Fashi in Song dynasty. Among them, palace structure is in a highest grade, highest calendar, scientific and artistic value. In general, they place in the center axis of palaces, temples, gardens, etc. They are big sizes in space and building components, with rectangular plane and exquisite decoration. So in this paper, palace structure is taken as the research object to study the damage and seimic behaviors of ancient buildings.In this thesis, the ancient timber structural system, structural layout are summarized first. The tests of wood properties are conducted. The mechanical properties and influencing factors of wood are studied. Next, pseudo-static testing research are conducted on three wooden frames using the mortise and tenon joints made in accordance with the requirements for the shape and structure in the book of Yingzao Fashi in Song dynasty. Thus palace structure's load transforming mechanism, failure mechanism and seismic performances such as force-deformation loops, skeleton curves, tangent stiffness and its deterioration, as well as ductility and energy dissipation are studied. The restoring force model of palace structure is set up for elastoplastic analysis. The results of experiments indicate that palace structure under the cyclic loading have full hysteretic curves and good energy dissipation. Then modal testing is carried out for wooden frames by instant hammering method. Experimental modal analysis is conducted and modal parameters(inherent frequencies, modal shapes and modal damping ratios)are obtained. Numerical model of palace structure are established for analyzing the dynamic property, using the finite element method. The anti-seismic capability of this structure is analyzed by time-history analysis. And the numerial results show that the timber frame with the special semi-rigid mortise and tenon joints has better seismic performance than the others.