Ocampo, Jamie Marie Y.

July 5, 2016
BSCE 5B

STRUCTURAL DAMAGE DUE TO EARTHQUAKES

1. Concrete

The most commonly observed damage to concrete structures was in the form of cracking and
falling of infill walls. The infill walls were very vulnerable and damage to these walls resulted in
significant economic loss and human casualties. However, the most striking failures were the
structural failures of modern multi-story buildings. Since buildings with sound construction
should not have experienced any major damage for the level of ground motion experienced, the
damage was due to inherent weakness in the structural system, design, detailing, poor material
quality and unsound construction practice. The damage spread not only to cities close to the
epicenter but also to major cities far from the epicenter.
Among the multi-story buildings that collapsed, most had the ground story left open for parking
with few or no infill walls between the columns. This created a top-heavy structure with
insufficient strength and stiffness in the open ground story. Most buildings with complete infill
walls in the ground story withstood the earthquake without collapse. Typical structural systems
and major reasons of damage of RC structures are explained in this section based on the field
investigation.

In Ahmedabad,India 300 km away from the

epicenter, sixty-nine reinforced concrete
buildings of five stories (ground floor plus
four stories) and eleven stories (ground
floor plus ten stories), collapsed resulting in
746 causalities.
About 80 percent of these buildings were
built after the introduction of earthquake
design codes. Although local geotechnical
conditions and site amplification seemed to
have influenced the damage patterns in
Ahmedabad which is located on thick
alluvial deposits along the Sabarmati River,
the maximum recorded peak ground
acceleration was as less as 0.11g at the basement of passport building.
26 January 2001 M7.9 Bhuj

Earthquake in Western India,

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian

In this earthquake, many reinforced concrete structures suffered minor to catastrophic damage.
The most commonly observed damage to RC structures was in the form of cracking and falling
of infill walls but the most striking failure was the structural failures of modern multi-stor
buildings. Damage to RC buildings especially concentrated on the five-story or eleven-story
buildings, which had soft ground floors used for parking. Since buildings with sound
construction should not have experienced any major damage for the level of ground motion
experienced, those damage was due to inherent weakness in the structural system, design,
detailing, poor material quality and unsound construction practice. This explains the widespread
structural damage to RC buildings in cities very far from the epicenter like Rajkot and
Ahmedabad. Damage to RC building structures can be attributed to the combination of the
following reasons.

2. Steel

Permanent ground deformations can tear a structure

apart. Some foundation types are better able to resist
these permanent ground deformations than others. For
example, the use of pile foundations, with the piles
extending beneath the anticipated zone of soil
liquefaction, can be effective in mitigating the hazards
effects. The use of heavily reinforced mats can also be
effective in resisting moderate ground deformation due
to fault rupture or lateral spreading. Most earthquake-
induced building damage, however, is a result of ground
shaking. When the ground shakes at a building site, the
buildings foundations vibrate in a manner thats similar
to the surrounding ground.

Brittle elements tend to break and lose strength.

(Examples of brittle elements include unreinforced
masonry walls that crack when overstressed in shear,
and unconfined concrete elements that crush under compressive overloads.) Ductile elements
are able to deform beyond their elastic strength limit and continue to carry load.
For economic reasons, building codes permit buildings to be damaged by the infrequent severe
earthquakes that may affect them, but prevent collapse and endangerment of life safety. For
buildings that house important functions essential to post-earthquake recovery, including
hospitals, fire stations, emergency communications centers, etc., codes adopt more
conservative criteria thats intended to minimize the risk that the buildings would be so severely
damaged they could not be used for their intended function.

Steel Structures that Provide Earthquake Resistance

Braced-frame systems rely on the stiffness and strength of vertical truss systems for lateral
resistance. Braced frames are categorized as concentric or eccentric, depending on whether the
connections of braces to beams, columns, and beam-to-column joints are concentric or not.
Concentrically braced frames can have many alternative patterns, including a single diagonal
brace in a bay, intersecting X-pattern braces in a bay, and inverted-V-pattern and V-pattern
braces in a bay. The latter case is also known as chevron-pattern bracing. Buckling-restrained
braced frames are a special type of concentrically braced frame with braces specially designed
to withstand yield level compressive forces without buckling. Eccentrically braced frames are
arranged as modifications of the single-diagonal pattern or chevron-pattern bracing.

The Most Important Aspects of Seismic Design

Continuity. The pieces that comprise a structure must be connected with sufficient strength so
that, when the structure responds to shaking, the pieces dont pull apart and the structure
responds as an integral unit.

Stiffness and Strength. Structures must have sufficient lateral and vertical strength so the forces
induced by relatively frequent, low-intensity earthquakes dont cause damage, and rare, high-
intensity earthquakes dont strain elements so far beyond yield points that they lose strength.

Regularity. A structure is regular if its configuration has a pattern of lateral deformation

during response to shaking thats relatively uniform throughout its height without twisting or
large concentrations of deformation in small areas of the structure.

Redundancy. Redundancy is important because of the basic design strategy behind the building
codes. If a structure only has a few elements to resist earthquake-induced forces, the structure
may lose its ability to resist further shaking when those elements become damaged; however, if
a large number of seismic-load-resisting elements are present and some become damaged,
others may still provide stability.

Defined Yield Mechanisms. In this approach, which is often termed capacity design, you must
decide which elements are going to yield under a strong earthquake. These elements are
detailed so they can sustain yielding without undesirable strength loss. At the same time, all
other elements of the structure, such as gravity load-carrying beams, columns, and
connections, are proportioned so theyre strong enough to withstand the maximum forces and
deformations that can be delivered by an earthquake once the intended yield mechanism has
been engaged.

A joint U.S.Japan reconnaissance team

examined the damage to steel building
structures caused by the 2011 Tohoku-oki
earthquake. In the city of Sendai, where the
peak horizontal ground acceleration exceeded
1 g, the majority of steel buildings performed
well. Buildings that used older cladding
systems for external finish sustained damage
to their claddings even if their structural
performance was excellent. Damage to a few
braced frames offer insight into the seismic
design of bracing connections. In areas
attacked by the violent tsunami, many steel buildings stood upright after the tsunami subsided,
although these buildings lost much of their external and internal finishes along with their
contents. These steel buildings did not provide safe shelter for tsunami evacuation when the
building submerged under the tsunami wave. A number of buildings suffered foundation failure,
which was likely caused by scouring or liquefaction or a combination of multiple effects.

3. Timber

Wood is one of the oldest structural materials

used in structures in many parts of the World.
Woodframe buildings were also commonly
constructed in Turkey until approximately 1960.
After that, as reinforced concrete and masonry
buildings have been preferred, wooden
buildings have almost been forgotten. But, in
1999, Kocaeli and Duzce earthquakes reminded
traditional buildings. Since reinforced concrete
buildings presented high level of damage and
traditional
buildings relatively performed well during these
earthquakes. In this study, types of traditional
wooden buildings used in Turkey are mainly
introduced and their damages in earthquakes
are discussed. Damaged and undamaged
wooden building photos are illustrated. Some
structural weaknesses are highlighted by the
earthquake damages including cracking and
falling of plaster, failure of mortar, loosening or
failing of connections, large lateral
displacements, dislodgement of the masonry
infill, loosening or failing of connections and
failure of connections to foundation.

Naohito Kawai 1, Hiroshi Isoda2, Takahiro Tsuchimoto3, Mikio Koshihara4

The damage to wood buildings occurred over a widespread from Tohoku down to northern
Kanto. The cause of damage was either by ground motion or by tsunami. In a series of damage
reconnaissance reports, outline of damage and analytical study including damage statistics,
earthquake, and strong motion. The damage due to ground motion is categorized by the
primary damage, which were the ground deformation including the liquefaction or the vibration
of the superstructure. Many wood houses got swept away by tsunami in areas of deep
inundation. However, there were a few cases where wood houses with high grade structural
specifications and shield against tsunami impact remained in place area.

DAMEGE DUE TO GROUND MOTION

The cause of damage is divided by either the damage due ground deformation or the damage
due to the vibration of the superstructure. The damage due to the vibration of the
superstructure is categorized as minor damage (damage to finishing materials only), moderate
damage (structural damage), and collapse. The use of timber buildings are houses, stores,
apartments, barns, warehouses, school buildings, public buildings, shrines, gymnasiums, and
other large buildings. Their construction method,
number of floors, size, and shape are different.