Field Investigation And Fea Simulation About The Seismic Performance Of The Ancient Brick-timber Structural Buildings In Nepal

Nepal which located in south of Asia is famous for its unique religious culture and ancient architectural art.However many earthquakes happened here in history because the country is located on the Mediterranean Himalaya earthquake belt.It's necessary to carry out researches about the seismic resistance of the ancient buildings in Nepal in order to protect the world's heritages of ancient architectures in Nepal.At present,researches on the earthquake damage of ancient buildings in Nepal mostly stay in qualitative introduction.Some finite element simulations were carried out on modern constructions and pagodas.There is a thorough research of ancient masonry-timber structure architecture which is common in this paper.Taking the nine-story Basantapur Tower and its auxiliary buildings as an example,this paper carries out the investigation on the building structural damages and the preliminarily exploration of finite element simulation.The nine-story Basantapur Tower and its auxiliary buildings consist of pagodas and ambulatories and the research about the buildings makes sense in this paper.In order to study the nine-story Basantapur Tower and its auxiliary buildings' earthquake damages in Nepal earthquake happened in April 25 th,there is following work has been done:1.This paper shows the major observations about the structural damages of the tower buildings due to the earthquake: Basantapur Tower collapsed from 7th to 9th floors;Lalitpur Tower's 6th floor damaged seriously;Bhaktapur Tower's 6th floor collapsed;some walls and windows damaged seriously;six cornices collapsed.The buildings reach above moderate damage level and it's difficult to repair.In addition to the investigation of earthquake damage,my academic advisor has also conducted field tests on vibration characteristics of damaged buildings.And the results are showed in this paper in order to verify the rationality of the finite element model.2.As well,the preliminary finite element analyses are also carried out to find the reasonable way to numerically simulate the earthquake damages of these brick-timber building structures simultaneously.And a simple and accurate method is proposed in this paper.And its rationality is proved in this paper.3.There are some suggestions for rehabilitation and reinforcement according to the investigation and finite element simulation: constructing the reinforced concrete columns and ring beams in the brick walls;setting enough annectent reinforcing bars applied in the shell;setting seismic joints to avoid the impacts between different buildings;using high strength mortar to bond bricks.The nine-story Basantapur Tower and its auxiliary buildings consist of pagodas and ambulatories were studied in this paper are more complex compared with other Nepali buildings were studied.The major observations about the structural damages are systematic.And the preliminary finite element analysis is simple and accurate.