Cultural relics are precious properties of all humankind, the damage of which is nonresilient. In previous earthquakes, stored cultural relics have shown poor seismic performance, so effective seismic methods are urgently needed. However, due to various restrictions, traditional damping methods are not suitable for the cultural relics stored in the Palace Museum. An efficient damping method, composed of silicone damper and connecting elements, is proposed to protect these stored cultural relics. This novel damping device is very convenient to install and no change or move for the original structures is needed. It is suitable for various kinds of new and existing relic cabinets. In order to validate the effectiveness of this novel damping method, both numerical simulation and shaking table tests are carried out. Results show that this method can effectively enhance the seismic performance of relic cabinet itself and the internal cultural relics. Relic cabinets with damping devices deform significantly less than noncontrol cabinets while the inside relics also have less sliding or overturning. Overall, a damping method, designed for seismic protection of cabinet stored cultural relics, is proposed and its effectiveness has been successfully demonstrated.

The infilled wall plays an important role in the formation of the survival space and life‐saving passage of the seismic collapse of reinforcement concrete (RC) frame structure. Here, with the numerical modeling method of the infilled wall, the connection between infilled wall and RC frame was primarily investigated. The combined finite element (FE) and finite‐discrete element (F‐DE) method is proposed to simulate the multispan and multistory RC frame structure with infilled wall. The reliability of the numerical simulation method was verified by the shaking table test; the evaluation criterion includes the collapse mechanism and mode. The results show that the numerical simulation is highly consistent with the shaking table test; it is easy for RC frame structure to form short columns due to the influence of the low or half‐height infilled wall, and the structural collapse is caused by the shear failure of columns; the overall structure shows pancake type of collapse; the survival space becomes smaller and smaller on the direction of structural collapse. The proposed numerical simulation method can be valuable in simulating RC frame structure with infilled wall for postearthquake rescue.

As one of the most important buildings in the Forbidden City of Beijing, the Qin-An palace was initially built in 1535 of the Ming dynasty. The palace is mainly constructed with large wooden frame structure (L-22.25 m × W-19.68 m × H-16.67 m) with asymmetric double eaves and thick masonry infill wall in the north face. To better understand the seismic performance of the palace itself and related non-structural components and provide useful suggestions for relic protection from earthquake damages, a scaled 1:5 architectural model of the prototype structure and a kind of typical sample relics inside the room is designed and constructed for the earthquake simulation test on the 5 × 5 meter shaking table. The overall responses and the damage mechanism of the model structure as well as the seismic behavior and the local effects of the key elements such as the bucket arch system between the roof and the frame, the masonry infill walls, and the comparative sample relics with and without base-isolation measurements are observed and analyzed deliberately.

Adjacent buildings with anticollision system would have the possibility of pounding under earthquake if there is insufficient separate distance between the two buildings. The effect of pounding and earthquake characters on the optimum parameters for anticollision system is studied through time‐history analysis method in this paper. Interstory displacement ratio, energy consumption ratio, and the total strain energy of the two buildings are considered as control variables. The results show that the pounding between adjacent buildings will reduce the range of optimum parameters, and earthquake characters also have effect on the selection of optimum parameters. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to input more than three ground motion records for a time‐history analysis to get the optimum parameters considering the effect of pounding and earthquake characters.