Our reporter Wang Qiong - Every night after work, Duo Shoujiang, a 36-year-old worker in a Western restaurant, would take out two hours to manually research and develop his spherical "safety shock-absorbing building". Finally, under his efforts, he successfully developed the model of what he considered to be the "safest building" that could absorb and prevent shocks.
Yesterday afternoon, I visited Duo Shoujiang's home and saw the model of this "safety shock-absorbing building" he had invented. Unlike traditional square buildings, this model was spherical. The above-ground and underground parts were separated, with the above-ground part supported by equidistant tie rods. The entire spherical structure was built within weight-bearing walls distributed like fingers, and each wall was equipped with a shock absorber.
Duo Shoujiang, who hails from Hebei province, said that after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, he saw many buildings collapse on TV, which made him feel particularly heavy-hearted. Thus, he decided to design a "building that can withstand earthquakes." He began to ponder over the reasons why houses collapsed during earthquakes: "It's not because the materials are substandard; it's because the seismic waves shake the foundation from the ground, causing the entire connected building above ground to sway violently with the underground part, leading to its collapse."
Therefore, he boldly conceived that the first step should be to separate the above-ground and underground parts so that "the above-ground and underground parts would move in opposite directions, thereby providing cushioning for the above-ground part." Subsequently, he thought about designing the building into a spherical shape, fixing it to the ground with strong equidistant tie rods around the periphery. He also planned to construct "hand-shaped concave" weight-bearing walls at the bottom of the building for double reinforcement and install shock absorbers on the load-bearing structures. In this way, when an earthquake strikes, the above-ground structure could automatically reduce the shock.
Duo Shoujiang boldly hypothesized that even if the tie rods used to fix the building to the ground were shaken off during a strong earthquake, the shock absorbers would still function, ensuring that even if the entire spherical building collapsed, "it wouldn't fall to the ground instantly with a hard impact like existing buildings but would have a soft buffer like a 'wheel' touching the ground." Pointing to his safety shock-absorbing model made of cardboard, Duo Shoujiang spoke at length, saying that he initially fantasized that his spherical building could float automatically when hit by a massive flood, "since it is ball-like, but these ideas still need further consideration."
Duo Shoujiang hopes that experts can provide an earthquake simulation platform to test his designed "safety shock-absorbing building." If his design passes the tests, he hopes to build such a "safe building" himself and live in it, "I will also consider other designs in the future."