Figure 2 - uploaded by Luca Zanotti Fragonara
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16-The Dou Gong system This having been said, also wood structures can suffer heavy damage from earthquakes. The World Heritage Site of Du Jiangyan, a renowned scenic spot in Qing Mountain, in China, has been damaged by the Sicuan earthquake in May 2008. The site
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![Figure 2.1-Epicentres of earthquakes (1980-1990) [2].](profile/Luca-Zanotti-Fragonara/publication/234126935/figure/fig1/AS:651201024634880@1532269831657/Epicentres-of-earthquakes-1980-1990-2_Q320.jpg)
Citations
Given the innumerable variations in time and age of construction, availability of local construction materials, the prevalent architectural styles, cultural influences, construction techniques and absence of codes of practice, rarely are any two heritage structures similar. This makes the establishment of standard practices for analysis of heritage structures a daunting task in spite of the early scientific interest in the subject. Structural health monitoring emerges as the most effective approach for investigation of the structural and material behaviour in such cases. Failure of such heritage structures as dams is primarily analysed for overturning, sliding, tensile and compressive failure. However, in case of composite dams, there is a possibility of internal failure due to failure in the weaker material. Thus, apart from conventional failure modes, this study aims to identify the potential failure pattern due to separation between materials or independent failure of the constituting materials with time of a 120-year-old composite dam during an earthquake through a non-linear time history analysis. A 2D non-linear time history analysis has been carried out in ANSYS 14 to estimate the time variant principle stresses for three time histories with varying PGA values as well as for degrading material strength over time. Stress results show that failure of weaker materials at joints may cause internal crack formation in the dam before external signs of failure are visible for higher PGA values. The paths of failure progression are also identified for all three time histories applied.
