Construction Forms and Seismic Performance of the Ancient Chinese Buildings Joined by Tenon–Mortise Joints

Zijincheng, also known as the Forbidden City, is largest and best-preserved ancient palace-type wooden building in China, built without using a single nail. Since it was 1420, has served palace where emperor lives works. Almost 600 years old, gone through two dynasties (i.e., Ming Qing (AD 1368–AD 1912)) 24 emperors. It survived more than 200 devastating earthquakes throughout its history, still standing strong. In this paper, authors introduce construction technology of Chinese structure well greatest secret seismic performance City. The study found that to City’s ability withstand many powerful lies flexibility timber structure, which mainly reflected application tenon-mortise joints, energy-dissipation capacity Dougong brackets shallow-buried columns. responses 1:5 reduced-scale model Shoukang Palace City under different earthquake magnitudes are studied series shaking table tests.