Scientific Research On Traditional Construction Of Cave Dwellings

Loess cave dwelling is a unique form of underground construction in loess plateau region, after years and endless. Because of its Low cost, simple construction, easy to get building materials, cool in summer and warm in winter, long durability, good seismic performance, there are still thousands of people live in caves.Being a major form of Chinese traditional dwellings, cave dwellings are the carrier of working people's experience for thousands of years with their own unique cultural heritage. They are the real sense of "green buildings" and "low-carbon buildings". Up to today, they have been existing in large numbers in rural areas because of their ecological advantages of energy saving, environmental protecting and wall material reusing as well as their low cost in particular.With the development of the urbanization process, people gradually think that discard cave dwellings and construct ground building are signs of poverty alleviation. So, majority of young people are beginning to build houses on the ground, gradually get rid of cave dwelling, the number of caves are decreasing year by year. In this condition, the characteristics of traditional houses are in danger. In order to protect this precious traditional houses, the valuable civil construction experience, the structural parameters and the folklore of this architectural forms are gathered. In this paper, the author collects more information through site investigation, and summarize the folk craft on cave dwelling construction. Mechanical knowledge and finite element method are also used to analyze the rationality of construction process. On the basis of these analysis, the structure principle that the caves can be use for hundreds of years without collapse are discussed. Under the support of the national "Eleventh Five-Year" science and technology support projects subject (subject number:2006BAJ04A02-01), this paper is mainly focused on the aspects as following:1,Through site investigation, we have obtained the related sizes of common structural elements of cave dwelling buildings, the traditional construction methods and construction practices, which can help us to get the forestation technology in rural area and provide a reference for establishing analytic models.2,Considering the structure properties, ABAQUS finite element software is used to find out the main force bearing location——the bearing rule of the leg of the cave dwelling buildings. The analysis results show that the width of the leg of the cave dwelling buildings which folk usually adopted is the width which is forced less in the finite element analysis results, and they could indicate that traditional Construction of Cave dwellings contains science foundation.3,Aiming at arch in self support structures, using calculation of Structural Mechanics to select model, and according to local actual situation to set force, to find out reasonable arch axis. And then we compare the reasonable arch axis with folk experience curve, the results show that they have overlap with each other, therefore, traditional Construction of Cave dwellings contains science foundation.4,Through site investigation, we select typical structure of cave dwelling——Lan-ma-qiang and Eaves to carry on mechanical analysis. The paper conducts local or overall overturning analysis respectively, and proves civil construction rational in mechanics, and finds out the reason of cave dwellings with good durability.5,To water circulation system of cave dwellings as the research object, the paper highlights running mechanism of water circulation system of cave dwellings, and analysis the structure of the well,the soakaway,the pile of rocks taiwan,the openings in water circulation system, and generalize the whole process of water circulation system in loess cave area.