Abstract:Through several earthquake damage investigations, it has been found that the casualties and economic losses during earthquakes are mainly caused by the building damage. Buildings in rural areas should be given more attention as they are mostly substandard, and hence, would have poor seismic performance. As a kind of green building structure system, cave structures have the advantages convenience, simple construction, low cost, and thermal insulation, so they are widely used in rural areas. Through the investigation of cave dwellings in the rural areas of northern Shanxi, it is concluded that most cave dwellings are independent adobe caves, where the predominant system is the adobe masonry structure, and there is no unified standard of cave construction, which leads to differences in shapes. As the internal force distribution of an arch structure is sensitive to change in shapes, to study the influence of shape characteristics of a cave on its seismic performance, a finite element model is established and analyzed. Combined with historical seismic disasters of caves, the damages of caves with different shape characteristics under earthquakes were compared. The results show that caves with thicker overburdened soil are more fragile, and two sides of a multi-span cave dwelling are more vulnerable to damage. The curved shape of an arch has some influence on the seismic performance of its structure, and an arch cave with reasonable shape has better seismic performance.