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ABSTRACT
The Great Wall is one of the most famous cultural heritages in the world. The defensive forts constitute the most important parts of the Great Wall. However, many of them have been severely damaged through the centuries, and their status requires a scientific evaluation. Taking the part of the Great Wall in the Yanqing district with 101 defensive forts as an example, on-site investigations were carried out and the main architectural forms, as well as the damage characteristics, were detected. Based on the architectural form analysis, a hierarchical quantitative evaluation system of the structural safety for the hollow defensive forts was established under vertical load. The grading criteria of crack and displacement indexes were obtained by using the elastic-plastic damage model through the finite element method. The weights of each layer index were calculated with the component importance method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process method. The component importance of the defensive forts is ordered as stone stereobate > brick stereobate > brick arch > flank wall > crenellation. Finally, four representative hollow defensive forts were chosen to demonstrate the proposed quantitative evaluation method. The research results can provide a preliminary screening method for conservation prioritization of the Great Wall forts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Ethical and data statement
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All data can be obtained by contacting the corresponding author.