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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 codes or earthquake codes are building codes designed to protect property and life in buildings in case of earthquakes. The need for such codes is reflected in the saying, "Earthquakes don't kill people—buildings do." Or in expanded version, "Earthquakes do not injure or kill people. Poorly built manmade structures injure and kill ...
In the wake of last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, prospective home buyers may be asking themselves what about a house makes it more able to weather a natural disaster. There ...
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]
As seen in the figure, a building has the potential to 'wave' back and forth during an earthquake (or even a severe wind storm). This is called the 'fundamental mode', and is the lowest frequency of building response. Most buildings, however, have higher modes of response, which are uniquely activated during earthquakes.
Modification and earthquake resistant design are also employed in elevated freeways and bridges. Codes are not designed to make buildings earthquake proof in the sense of them suffering zero damage. The goal of most building designs is to reduce earthquake damage to a building such that it protects the lives of occupants and thus tolerance of ...
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.
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 ...