Ancient Sandbox Technique: An Experimental Study Using Piezoelectric Sensors

摘要

Ancient Indian temples are accredited for their immaculate style of construction. These temples are resistant to most natural calamities due to their geometry, material and construction technique. Of these, the foundation is considered to be the major contributing factor for their structural stability. Research on ancient foundation techniques can bring about a huge impact on today's foundation technologies. This paper presents a study on the Sandbox Technique for foundations, which was used around the 11 century, by the Kakatiya Dynasty in Telangana (South India). The sandbox technique was used to build the foundation for two major temples in Telangana viz. Ramappa temple and 1000 pillar temple. As part of our study, we carried out experiments on sand (dry and wet) and wet Red soil materials by building a model which mimics the Sandbox technique. In this context, piezoelectric knock sensors are used to capture the vibrations. We determined the dampening of vibrations for sand (dry & wet) and wet Red soil for various types of loads. Our analysis of the results obtained shows that sand with water absorbs more vibrations as compared to dry sand and wet Red soil.