Analysis on the Building Material of the Traditional Copper Hall from the Taishan Mountain, Using XRF and GIS

Abstract

The alloy analysis of the building material of the copper hall from Taishan Mountain (TCH) is presented. First, the historical building structure of the TCH is investigated and introduced. Then the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) results are given. Analysis is done based on the units of building component. The results show that about one third of the components are made in brass, and two thirds are in bronze. Further, The XRF results are loaded into geographic information system (GIS) to analyze the relation between the building components and their materials. Most of the major structural components are made in bronze, or contains relative higher Sn. Finally, the reason why TCH use both bronze and brass as building materials is discussed.