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Earthquake-resistant or aseismic structures are designed to protect buildings to some or greater extent from earthquakes. While no structure can be entirely impervious to earthquake damage, the goal of earthquake engineering is to erect structures that fare better during seismic activity than their conventional counterparts.
Seismic retrofitting is the modification of existing structures to make them more resistant to seismic activity, ground motion, or soil failure due to earthquakes.With better understanding of seismic demand on structures and with recent experiences with large earthquakes near urban centers, the need of seismic retrofitting is well acknowledged.
Steel structures are considered mostly earthquake resistant but some failures have occurred. A great number of welded steel moment-resisting frame buildings, which looked earthquake-proof, surprisingly experienced brittle behavior and were hazardously damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. [59]
Contrary to popular belief, base isolation does not make a building earthquake proof. Base isolation system consists of isolation units with or without isolation components, where: Isolation units are the basic elements of a base isolation system which are intended to provide the aforementioned decoupling effect to a building or non-building ...
Special structures, such as nuclear power plants, offshore structures and large dams, are beyond the scope of EN 1998. EN 1998 contains only those provisions that, in addition to the provisions of the other relevant Eurocodes, must be observed for the design of structures in seismic regions. It complements in this respect the other EN Eurocodes.
Seismic analysis is a subset of structural analysis and is the calculation of the response of a building (or nonbuilding) structure to earthquakes. It is part of the process of structural design, earthquake engineering or structural assessment and retrofit (see structural engineering) in regions where earthquakes are prevalent.
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake (Portugal) resulted in prescriptive rules for building certain kinds of buildings common in the area. [2]Following the 1908 Messina earthquake (Italy), the Royal Government of Italy established Geological Committee and Engineering Committee in early 1909 to study the disaster and recommend earthquake disaster mitigation measures.
In construction, cross bracing is a system utilized to reinforce building structures in which diagonal supports intersect. Cross bracing is usually seen with two diagonal supports placed in an X-shaped manner. Under lateral force (such as wind or seismic activity) one brace will be under tension while the other is being compressed.