抗震Traditional Chinese Buildings and Their Performance in Earthquake.pdfVIP

Traditional Chinese Buildings and Their Performance in Earthquake By Zhang Zhiping The Chinese architecture has a history as long as that of the Chinese culture and longer than that of approximate 4000 years of the written history of China. We have learnt from excavated ancient ruins that there were timber-frame buildings in valleys of Yellow river and Yangtze rivers (the birthplace of the Chinese culture) in the Neolithic Age. For instance, at the Banpo Ruins in Xi’an (7000-5000 years ago), there are houses with timber frames and daub walls. At Hemudu Ruins in Zhejiang province (7000-6000 years ago), a timber-frame building has been found. The individual architecture is more than 30 meters long and 5-6 meters wide, with ground floor opening and second floor planked. Those wood structural parts processed by stone artifact are divided into the column, beam and board, and even tenon and mortise. There are circular or rectangular mortises on the column and similar tenons on both ends of the beam, and tongue-groove joint between the boards. (Figure 1) From then on, the Chinese architecture has followed the conventional way of structure that wood is the main material and the timber-frame is the main bearing system for several thousand of years. That is a distinguish feature of the Chinese architecture, a traditional and inherent architectural pattern, never changed for several thousand years. The reason for the above is that, apart from the rich forest resources known to everybody, the flexible layouts for plan and space of a building, the strong adaptability for climate situation, the convenience in felling, transportation and processing, and Chinese aesthetic and philoso