Stability Analysis Of Ancient City Walls

As a significant peripheral defence for ancient cities, city wall is an enormous structure in the sword and arrow age. These city walls are made up of internal packed soil and external brick masonry from the Ming Dynasty. However, they are damaged gradually by nature and human activities during the rapid development of modern cities in China. To investigate the stability of these ancient city walls, we use the strength reduction finite element method (FEM) with nonlinear contact to evaluate the stability of these walls. Calculations of construction practice indicate that the strength reduction finite element with non-linear contact is an effective method to trace the failure process of these ancient city walls. The stability of these walls improves with augmentation of mortar strength and friction coefficient of soil-masonry interface.