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The Big Ben Clock Tower: Protective compensation grouting operations
Published in Renato Lancellotta, Alessandro Flora, Carlo Viggiani, Geotechnics and Heritage: Historic Towers, 2017
D.I. Harris, R.J. Mair, J.B. Burland, J.R. Standing
The next grouting episode below the Clock Tower was concurrent grouting associated with the enlargement to form the westbound station tunnel. Grouting within the settlement trough was fully coordinated with tunnel advances and was augmented by additional injections below the Clock Tower. The aim was to produce full compensation for the tunnelling-induced settlements together with a small reduction in tilt. This was successfully achieved, with the tilt being reduced by 5 mm. Thereafter, during excavation of the escalator box from 9 m depth to 39 m and the enlargement for the eastbound platform tunnel, grouting was undertaken in response to the observed tilts of the Clock Tower rather than being directly related to construction activities. A construction control range of 15 mm to 25 mm tilt was adopted. It can be seen from Figure 7 that the upper limit of this control range was not exceeded throughout the construction period although occasionally the lower limit was exceeded. In total, 24 episodes of grouting were undertaken between January 1996 and September 1997 over which period a total volume of 122 m3 $ ^{3} $ of grout were injected beneath the Clock Tower. In general, grouting was confined to the northern half of the raft foundation as shown in Figure 8 for a typical grouting episode. Harris (2001b) gives a more detailed account of the grouting procedures adopted.
A new perspective on eclectic attributes in architecture: taking eclectic architecture in Beijing and Hong Kong as an example
Published in Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 2023
The test then chooses a group of large public buildings as the intuition research objects for the second set of classic eclectic architecture. The Main Building of The Land Army Headquarter of the Qing Dynasty is located at No. 3 Zhang Zi Zhong Road, Beijing (Figure 7). The place was originally the noble school in the late Qing Dynasty, which was rebuilt and re-opened as headquarter for Army Department in 1909. The dominant style of the building is the Western classical style, which adopts wood structure, triangular truss, and iron sheet roof. The facade is decorated with a large number of gray brick carvings with exquisite patterns. Since the building was designed by the early Chinese Architect (Shen Qi) and built by local craftsmen, the case reflects the professional level and technical process of early Chinese architectural design and construction skills, which is of great significance for studying the process of Chinese architectural modernization (Lai 1993). In the meantime, the Main Building of the University of Hong Kong is the oldest building on campus, which was donated by the well-known Parsi businessman and philanthropist Sir Hormusjee Nawrojee Mody (Figure 8). It was completed in 1912, dominated by Western classical style. This well-proportioned red-brick building has three stories, supported by granite columns of the Ionic order. The case is designed symmetrically around the central axis of the clock tower. In general, the main building features the style characteristics of Gothic, Baroque, and Renaissance architecture (Department of Architecture, The Hong Kong University 1999).
Ambient Vibrations of Age-old Masonry Towers: Results of Long-term Dynamic Monitoring in the Historic Centre of Lucca
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2021
Riccardo Mario Azzara, Maria Girardi, Valerio Iafolla, David M. Lucchesi, Cristina Padovani, Daniele Pellegrini
The present paper is aimed at investigating the dynamic behaviour of a medieval tower located in a historic centre and subjected to vibrations from the surrounding environment, the main goals being: to characterize the main sources of vibration, the trend of the tower’s dynamic properties over time, and the tower’s response to the activities in the historic centre. To this end, the authors rely on a dataset obtained from 5 months of continuous measurements (November 2017 to March 2018) on the so-called “Torre delle Ore” (henceforth Clock Tower) in the historic centre of Lucca. The measurements were recorded via two different sets of high-sensitivity instruments, both installed on the tower during the monitoring period: four three-axial seismometric stations (each equipped with a SL06 24-bit digitizer coupled to a SS20 electrodynamic velocity transducer) developed by SARA Electronic Instruments S.r.l. and furnished by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), and two accelerometers designed for applications in the fields of gravitation, space dynamics and oceanographic research (Iafolla et al. 2015), and specifically adjusted for the current experiment by Assist in Gravitation and Instrumentation (AGI S.r.l.) of Rome, a spin-off enterprise of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). The combined use of the two different kinds of measurement devices has allowed for a comparison of the instruments’ performance, as well as cross-validation of the results obtained for the Clock Tower, which have also been corroborated by the outcomes of two-year continuous monitoring conducted on the nearby San Frediano bell tower (Azzara et al. 2018, 2019).
Monitoring of a Historical Masonry Structure in Case of Induced Seismicity
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2021
İhsan Engin Bal, Dimitris Dais, Eleni Smyrou, Vasilis Sarhosis
The structure is surrounded by a manmade lake with a water depth of approximately 1.5 m. The main structure has a U-shaped plan consisting of a partial basement, two floors, roof attic and a clock tower (Figure 1). The construction material of the load-bearing walls is clay brick with additions of stones in the corners, and metal ties and timber elements in the roof.