Back Issues 11-20
THE MAJOR CAUSE OF BUILDING FALL FAILURES DURING TECTONIC EARTHQUAKES
Tse-Shan Hsu
Department of Civil Engineering, Feng-Chia University
Taiwan R.O.C.
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Hong-Chia Chang
Ph.D Program for Civil Engineering, Water Resources Engineering, and Infrastructure Planning, Feng-Chia University
Taiwan R.O.C.
Chao-Ming Chi
Department of Civil Engineering, Feng-Chia University
Taiwan R.O.C.
Abstract
All buildings in a seismic area must meet the requirements of the Seismic Design Specifications of Buildings. However, the building fall failures that have caused a large number of deaths in previous tectonic earthquakes continue to occur. The vibration resistance of columns, beams, plates and walls continues to increase, yet, the number of building fall failures has not been reduced. To this regard, in this paper, first, the conditions and mechanism of building fall failures in tectonic earthquakes are proposed, and then the major cause of building fall failures are discussed based on the example of the Tongshuai Building. It is found that the previous Seismic Design Specifications of Buildings do not include this failure cause. Therefore, it is suggested that only by including earthquake prevention methods for this cause in the Specifications can the number of building fall failures be reduced on a large scale.
Keywords: Engineering, Earthquakes, Seismic Design, Building, Fall Failure, Mechanism, Shear Band.
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