Back Issues 11-20

THE MAJOR CAUSE OF THE WANFO TEMPLE COLLAPSE IN THE 1999 JIJI EARTHQUAKE: SHEAR BANDING

Tse-Shan Hsu

Department of Civil Engineering, Feng-Chia University 

Taiwan R.O.C.

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Sheng-Nan Li

 Ph.D Program in Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Feng-Chia University

Taiwan R.O.C.

Hao-Yi Huang

Department of Civil Engineering, Feng-Chia University 

Taiwan R.O.C.

Abstract

For the past thousand years, Taiwanese have continuously built temples in mountainous areas. However, the Ministry of the Interior issued the first version of the building seismic-resistant design code in 1974. Therefore, only newly built temples meet the building seismic-resistant design code. However, the fact shows that many temples that collapsed during the 921 Jiji earthquake are new temples. Therefore, the authors of this paper use the Wanfo Temple as an example to explore the reason why new temples that meet the design criteria are easy to collapse in the earthquake. Through this paper, it is found that the only earthquakes that can cause buildings to collapse are tectonic earthquakes, and the main effect of tectonic earthquakes is shear banding, and the secondary effect is ground vibrations. However, the current building seismic- resistant design codes only include the secondary effect and not the major effect. Therefore, although the new temples are resistant to ground vibrations, it will still collapse under shear banding. In view of this, it is recommended that the building seismic-resistant design code should include both primary and secondary effects. Only in this way can the new temples be prevented from collapsing in the future tectonic earthquakes.

Keywords: temple, collapse, tectonic earthquake, shear banding, ground vibration.

Attachments:

1060 Final.pdf

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3095 kB