Abstract
As one of the largest and best-preserved Buddhist art treasure houses in the world, the Mogao Grottoes attracts a great number of tourists from all over the world. With an increasing number of visitors, the influence of visitors on the stability of network caves will increase as well. To understand the influence of tourist static load on the caves and the long-term stability of the Mogao Grottoes, the stress distribution and deformation characteristics of surrounding rock mass are analyzed under different tourist static loads using a finite-difference method. The analysis shows that these will produce a stress concentration and large vertical displacement on the cave roof and densely distributed cave area. Meanwhile, tourist load has a slight but not significant influence on the changing of the stress distribution of the caves, and the influence on the displacement is relatively obvious; however, the influence can be neglected due to its small displacement. Consequently, the effect of tourist load on the stability of the caves is not significant. However, different distribution types of tourists within the caves have an obvious effect on the distribution of displacement. Distribution of tourists on both sides of the cave should be the recommended process, mainly because it can effectively reduce the vertical displacement of the roofs and floors of the caves. Moreover, the analyzed results are of great significance to tourist management as well as to the long-term preventive protection of the Mogao Grottoes.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51578272) and the Innovation Group of Basic Research in Gansu Province (Grant No. 2014GS03574). The results of this work were based on the data collected in Dunhuang Academy and the field investigation was also supported by these data. The authors thank all the members who gave help and cooperation.
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©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Sep 25, 2017
Accepted: Jan 30, 2018
Published online: May 26, 2018
Published in print: Aug 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Oct 26, 2018
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