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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.
EN 1998-1 applies to the design of buildings and civil engineering works in seismic regions. It is subdivided in 10 Sections, some of which are specifically devoted to the design of buildings. Section 1 of EN 1998-1 contains the scope, normative references, assumptions, principles and application rules, terms and definitions, symbols and units.
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]
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.
In January 1928, the first edition of the Uniform Building Code (UBC) was published, and included an appendix with non-mandatory matter with §2311 recommending a minimum lateral design force for earthquake resistance of V = 0.075W for buildings on foundations with allowable bearing pressures of 4,000 psf or more, and 0.10 W for all other ...
One of the early examples of the earthquake design strategy is the one given by Dr. J.A. Calantariens in 1909. It was proposed that the building can be built on a layer of fine sand, mica or talc that would allow the building to slide in an earthquake, thereby reducing the forces transmitted to building.
This approach defines a series of forces acting on a building to represent the effect of earthquake ground motion, typically defined by a seismic design response spectrum. It assumes that the building responds in its fundamental mode. For this to be true, the building must be low-rise and must not twist significantly when the ground moves.
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 ...