Methods and tools for understanding historic buildings: the case study of the pagoda of "Fogong Temple" in China.

Yingxian wooden tower was built in 1056 AD, has a history of nearly 1,000 years, is the oldest and highest existing wooden tower building in China, and is also the only-wooden structure pavilion tower. The wooden pagoda has endured nearly 1,000 years of vicissitudes and has withstood many strong earthquakes and man-made destruction, showing the world China's splendid civilization. But it should also be seen that after thousands of years of wooden tower, its structure has undergone obvious compression, inclination and torsional deformation, wherein the component stagnation bearing pressure failure and bending produce serious deformation and damage, wood member cracking and aging, still suffer from human damage such as shelling, and these conditions have a tendency to deteriorate with time. Structural safety assessment and repairs are urgently needed for wooden towers. However, the structure of the wooden tower in Yingxian County is complex, the structural system and its force transmission path are not clear, and the node structure and force transmission mechanism are not clear. On the basis of a comprehensive structural investigation, this paper interprets the structure of the wooden tower, so as to provide an important basis for the safety assessment and even maintenance and reinforcement of the wooden tower structure. In this paper, the damage characteristics and repair plan of Yingxian wooden tower are analyzed and evaluated. According to the literature data and the site survey report, the damage situation of the wooden tower in the corresponding county was systematically analyzed, the historical restoration projects and the current restoration proposals were summarized, and the characteristics of various restoration plans were evaluated according to the principles of cultural relics protection.