Richards, J;
Zhao, G;
Zhang, H;
Viles, H;
(2019)
A controlled field experiment to investigate the deterioration of earthen heritage by wind and rain.
Heritage Science
, 7
, Article 51. 10.1186/s40494-019-0293-7.
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Abstract
Earthen heritage constitutes 10% of sites on the World Heritage List and many of these sites are experiencing extensive deterioration caused by environmental forces, such as wind and rain. This study used a well-established test wall to investigate the impact of environmental conditions on the deterioration of earthen heritage at the remote and under-studied site of Suoyang Ancient City, Gansu Province, China, which is exhibiting widespread deterioration. Test walls have previously been used in earthen heritage research as they allow controlled experiments to be undertaken on complex, realistic structures without risking damage or loss of value to the historic material. This study used portable wind and rain erosion simulation devices to investigate experimentally (i) the comparative effect of wind, sediment-laden wind and wind-driven rain in causing deterioration to earthen heritage and (ii) how the incipient deterioration features produced by wind, sediment-laden wind and wind-driven rain on the test wall relate to the deterioration features recorded on the historic city walls. The test wall was subjected to low, medium and high intensities of clean wind, sediment-laden wind and wind-driven rain. The extent of deterioration produced was measured using repeat, high resolution laser scans before and after each test run. The deterioration features caused by each environmental force were notably different with clean wind removing the loose surface material, sediment-laden wind causing pitting and wind-driven rain causing incipient gullying. These incipient features compare well with more developed features seen on the historic walls. Wind-driven rain caused the greatest amount of deterioration while clean wind caused the least. However, as the frequency and duration of wind events at Suoyang is much greater than those of rain events, wind is likely to play an important role in the deterioration of earthen heritage over annual timescales. These findings show that conservation strategies at rammed earth sites like Suoyang need to address the impact of multiple environmental forces, such as clean wind, sediment laden wind and wind-driven rain.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A controlled field experiment to investigate the deterioration of earthen heritage by wind and rain |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40494-019-0293-7 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-019-0293-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Earthen heritage, Deterioration, Field experiment, Northwest China |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10084030 |
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