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EARTHQUAKE RESISTANT IN STRUCTURES

 ARUN PRASAD.P
 RAHMAN

STUDENT OF PSN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, TIRUNELVELI.

EARTHQUAKE

An earthquake is a sudden, rapid shaking of the Earth caused by the breaking and shifting of rock
beneath the Earth’s surface. For hundreds of millions of years, the forces of plate tectonics have
shaped the Earth as the huge plates that form the Earth’s surface move slowly over, under, and
past each other. Sometimes the movement is gradual. At other times, the plates are locked
together, unable to release the accumulating energy. When the accumulated energy grows strong
enough, the plates break free causing the ground to shake. Most earthquakes occur at the
boundaries where the plates meet; however, some earthquakes occur in the middle of plates.

If this happens in the sea, a Tsunami is formed, which can travel at about 600 miles per hour, a
long gentle swell until it reaches shallow water, when it can rear up as a huge steep wave, and
then breaks. But that is another story.

After the Earthquake, the area settles down again. But the movement carries on and the next
Earthquake is already building up, remorselessly. People forget and build buildings and
structures that are going to kill their children next time when they could ensure that during the
design and construction phase some earthquake proof measures have been incorporated

FAILURE PATTERN OF STRUCTURE IN EARTHQUAKES 

An Earthquake moves the ground. It can be one sudden movement, but more often it is a series
of shock waves at short intervals, like our ripples from the pebble in the pond analogy above. It
can move the land up and down, and it can move it from side to side.
All buildings can carry their own weight (or they would fall down anyway by themselves). They
can usually carry a bit of snow and a few other floor loads and suspended loads as well,
vertically; so even badly built buildings and structures can resist some up-and-down loads. But
buildings and structures are not necessarily resistant to side-to-side loads, unless this has been
taken into account during the design and construction phase with some earthquake proof
measures taken into consideration. This weakness would only be found out when the Earthquake
strikes, and this is a bad time to find out.

It is this side-to-side load which causes the worst damage, often collapsing poor buildings on the
first shake.

The side-to-side load can be worse if the shocks come in waves, and some bigger buildings can
vibrate like a huge tuning fork, each new sway bigger than the last, until failure. This series of
waves is more likely to happen where the building is built on deep soft ground, like Mexico City.
A taller or shorter building nearby may not oscillate much at the same frequency.

Often more weight has been added to a building or structure at most frequently at greater heights;
say another floor and another over that; walls built round open balconies and inside partitions to
make more, smaller, rooms; rocks piled on roofs to stop them blowing away; storage inside. This
extra weight produces great forces on the structure and helps it collapse. The more weight there
is, and the higher this weight is in the building, the stronger the building and its foundations must
be to be resistant to side earthquakes; many buildings have not been strengthened when the extra
weight was added.

In a lot of multi storey buildings, the floors and roofs are just resting on the walls, held there by
their own weight; and if there is any structural framing it is too often inadequate. This can result
in a floor or roof falling off its support and crashing down, crushing anything below.

In many concrete framed buildings, thought has gone in to the design of the columns to resist
sway load, and the columns appear perfect until Earthquake oscillations start. Small cracks
appear in the concrete. The bonding of the 'stirrups' (the small steel bars which bind the main
reinforcement together) to the concrete weakens, the outer concrete crumbles (spalling), the main
reinforcing bars can bend outwards away from the column and all strength disappears. This was
beautifully demonstrated under the Oakland Freeway, where huge round concrete columns
crumbled and crumpled. They have now been reinforced with massive belts around them.

In a lot of multi storey buildings the lower floor has more headroom (so taller columns); and it
often has more openings (so less walls); and it is usually stood on 'pinned' feet with no
continuity. So the ground-to-first floor columns, which carry the biggest loads from the weight
and the biggest cumulative sideways loads from the earthquake, are the longest and the least
restrained and have the least end fixity. They are often the first to fail. It only takes one to fail for
the worst sort of disaster, the pancake collapse so familiar to anyone who has seen the results in
Armenia, Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Peru, and now Pakistan and Kashmir.

Some tall buildings can stay almost intact but fall over in their entirety. The taller the building,
the more likely this is to happen, particularly if the building can oscillate at the frequency of the
shock waves, and particularly if some liquefaction of soft soil underneath has allowed the
building to tilt.

TO MAKE A BUILDINGS RESISTANT TO EARTHQUAKES

To be earthquake proof, buildings, structures and their foundations need to be built to be resistant
to sideways loads.

If the sideways resistance is to be obtained from walls, these walls must go equally in both
directions. They must be strong enough to take the loads. They must be tied in to any framing,
and reinforced to take load in their weakest direction. They must not fall apart and must remain
in place after the worst shock waves so as to retain strength for the aftershocks.

If the sideways load is to be resisted with moment resisting framing then great care has to be
taken to ensure that the joints are stronger than the beams, and that the beams will fail before the
columns, and that the columns cannot fail by spalling if in concrete. Again the rigid framing
should go all around, and in both directions.

If the building resistance is to come from moment resisting frames, then special care should be
taken with the foundation-to-first floor level. If the requirement is to have a taller clear height,
and to have open holes in the walls, then the columns at this level may have to be much stronger
than at higher levels; and the beams at the first floor, and the columns from ground to second
floor, have to be able to resist the turning loads these columns deliver to the frame. Alternatively,
and preferably, the columns can be given continuity at the feet. This can be done with 'fixed feet'
with many bolts into large foundations, or by having a grillage of steel beams at the foundation
level able to resist the column moments. Such steel grillage can also keep the foundations in
place.

If the beams in the frame can bend and yield a little at their highest stressed points, without
losing resistance, while the joints and the columns remain full strength, then a curious thing
happens: the resonant frequency of the whole frame changes. If the building was vibrating in
time with shock waves, this vibration will tend to be damped out. This phenomenon is known as
'plastic hingeing' and is easily demonstrated in steel beams, though a similar thing can happen
with reinforced concrete beams as long as spalling is avoided.

All floors have to be connected to the framing in a robust and resilient way. They should never
be able to shake loose and fall. Again all floors should be as light as possible. They should go all
round each column and fix to every supporting beam or wall, in a way that cannot be shaken off.

One way of reducing the vulnerability of big buildings is to isolate them from the floor using
bearings or dampers, but this is a difficult and expensive process not suitable for low and
medium rise buildings and low cost buildings. (Though it may be a good technique for
Downtown Tokyo).

EARTHQUAKE PROOF BUILDINGS

The first thing is to make the highest bit, the roof, as light as possible. This is best done with
profiled steel cladding on light gauge steel Zed purlins. This can also have double skin with
spacers and insulation. It can have a roof slope between 3 and 15 degrees. If it is required to have
a 'flat' roof, this could be made with a galvanized steel decking and solid insulation boards, and
topped with a special membrane. Even a 'flat' roof should have a slope of about 2 degrees. If it is
required to have a 'flat' concrete roof, then the best solution is to have steel joists at about 2m, 6",
centres, and over these to have composite style roof decking. Then an RC slab can be poured
over the roof, with no propping; the slab will only be say 110mm, 4 1/2", and will weigh only
about 180 kg/sqm. Such a slab will be completely bonded to the frame and will not be able to
slip off, or collapse.

If the building or structure is a normal single storey, then any normal portal frame or other steel
framed building, if the design and construction is competently done, will be resistant to
Earthquake loads. If it is to have 2 or more stories, more needs to be done to ensure its survival
in an earthquake.

Start at the bottom. The frame should not be built on simple pinned feet at ground level. Outside
earthquake zones it is normal to build a 'Nominally pinned footing' under each column. This
actually gives some fixity to the base as well as horizontal and vertical support. But in an
earthquake, this footing may be moving and rotating, so rather than provide a bit of fixity, it can
push to left or right, or up and down, and rotate the column base, helping the building to collapse
prematurely. Any pinned footing may actually be moving differently from other footings on the
same building, and so not even be giving horizontal or vertical support, but actually helping to
tear the building apart. So to earthquake proof the building Reidsteel would start with steel
ground beams joining the feet together, and these should have moment resistance to prevent the
bottoms of the columns from rotating. These ground beams may well go outside the line of the
building, thus effectively reducing the height-to-width ratio as well, helping to reduce total over-
turning. This ground beam may be built on pads or piles or rafts as appropriate. On loose soils,
the bearing pressure should be very conservatively chosen, to minimize effect of liquification.

Reid Steel would fix the main beams to the outer columns with full capacity joints. This will
almost always mean haunched connections. Great care would be taken to consider the shear
within the column at these connections. The connections should be equally strong in both up or
down directions, and the bolt arrangement should never fail before the beam or the column. In
extreme earthquake sway, the beams should always be able to form hinges somewhere, in one or
two places, without the column with its axial load failing elastically. In this way the frame can
deflect, the plastic hinges can absorb energy; the resonant frequency of the structure is altered,
all without collapse or major loss of strength. All this takes a little time until the tremor passes.
The inner columns do not give a lot of sway resistance, but even so, should have connections
which do not fail before the beam or the column.

Then, the floors are fitted, Light-weight or conventional cladding is fitted to the frames, light-
weight or thin concrete roofs are fitted as described above. You have a building that will behave
very well in an earthquake.

Nothing can be guaranteed to be fully resistant to any possible earthquake, but buildings and
structures like the ones proposed here by ReidSteel would have the best possible chance of
survival; and would save many lives and livelihoods, providing greater safety from an
earthquake.

EARTHQUAKE RESISTANT STRUCTURES

Earthquakes are a major geological phenomena. Man has been terrified of this phenomena for
ages, as little has been known about the causes of earthquakes, but it leaves behind a trail of
destruction. There are hundreds of small earthquakes around the world everyday. Some of them
are so minor that humans cannot feel them, but seismographs and other sensitive machines can
record them. Earthquakes occur when tectonic plates move and rub against each other.
Sometimes, due to this movement, they snap and rebound to their original position. This might
cause a large earthquakes as the tectonic plates try to settle down. This is known as the Elastic
Rebound Theory.

Haiti Earthquake 2010

Every year, earthquakes take the lives of thousands of people , and destroy property worth
billions. The 2010 Haiti earthquake killed over 1,50,000 people and destroyed entire cities and
villages. Designing Earthquake Resistant Structures is indispensable. It is imperative that
structures are designed to resist earthquake forces, in order to reduce the loss of life. The science
of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Design has improved tremendously, and thus, today,
we can design safe structures which can safely withstand earthquakes of reasonable magnitude.

TYPES OF SEISMIC WAVES

During fault ruptures which cause earthquakes, the sudden breakage and movement along the
fault can release tremendous amount of energy. Some of this energy is used up in cracking and
pulverizing the rock as the two blocks of rock separated by the fault grind past each other. Part of
the energy, however, speeds through the rock as seismic waves. This waves can travel for and
cause damage at great distances. Once they start, these waves continue through the earth until
their energy is used up.

There are two basic types of seismic waves, and they travel at different speeds through earth. The
faster p waves and the slower s waves.
PRIMARY OR PUSH WAVES OR P WAVES

PRIMARY WAVES

These are longitudinal in nature like sound waves. The velocity of P waves is highest about 5.4
km/s and depends on the density of the rock and resistance to compression. P waves can pass
through liquids also.

HAZARDOUS EFFECTS OF EARTHQUAKES

Earthquakes cause massive vibrations in the Earth’s crust. This can cause a number of problems
in the ground, which in turn becomes a hazard to all life and property. The effect depends on the
geology of soil and topography of the land.
1964 Niigata earthquake

GROUND MOTION

The most destructive of all earthquake hazards is caused by seismic waves reaching the ground
surface at places where human-built structures, such as buildings and bridges, are located. When
seismic waves reach the surface of the earth at such places, they give rise to what is known as
strong ground motion. Strong ground motions cause’s buildings and other structures to move and
shake in a variety of complex ways. Many buildings cannot withstand this movement and suffer
damages of various kinds and degrees.

EFFECTS OF EARTHQUAKES ON STRUCTURES

VIOLENT GROUND MOTION DURING EARTHQUAKES

The seismic waves travel for great distances before finally losing most of their energy. At some
time after their generation, these seismic waves will reach the earth’s surface, and set it in
motion, which we surprisingly refer to as earthquake ground motion. When this earthquake
ground motion occurs beneath a building and when it is strong enough, it sets the building in
motion, starting with the buildings foundation, and transfers the motion throughout the rest of
building in a very complex way. These motions in turn induce forces which can produce damage.
Haiti Earthquake Damage 2010

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