Earthquake Resistant Building Design, Philosophy and Suggestion for Nepalese
It is not possible to make complete earthquake-proof buildings that will not get damaged even during the rare but strong earthquake. Instead, the engineering intention is to make buildings earthquake-resistant such buildings resist the effects of ground shaking, although they may get damaged severely but would not collapse during the strong earthquake. Thus, the safety of people and contents is assured in earthquake-resistant buildings.
The earthquake design philosophy is summarized as follows:
 |
| Fig:: Performance |
In case of minor and moderate shaking the main member of buildings that carry loads should sustain repairable damage.
But in case of strong shaking, the main members should sustain severe (even irreparable) damage, but the building should not collapse.
The design of buildings to resist earthquakes involves controlling the damage to acceptable limits at a reasonable cost. There is a common thinking among people that any crack in building after an earthquake means the building is unsafe for living. But the fact is some of these cracks are acceptable (in terms of both their size and location), while others are not.
For eg: diagonal cracks in columns as shown in the below figure are not acceptable.
 |
| Fig: Diagonal Failure |
My Advise
For construction of earthquake resistant house the proper distribution of steel is more important than adding an extra percentage of steel.
The seismic inertia forces are transmitted from the floors to the beams than to the columns. The failure of the column would affect the stability of the building than the beam failure. Hence it is appreciable to make beam as weak ductile links than columns. The design method is called a strong column-weak beam concept.
#Thank you for Visiting my blog any feedbacks are highly appreciated.
Comments
Post a Comment