Lessons learned from the Earthquake Damages of Reinforced Concrete Building Structures in the Light of the International Point of View
By T. Shimazu
Concrete Journal, Vol.45, No.8, Aug. 2007
- Synopsis
- This paper reviews the earthquake damages of reinforced concrete buildings structures for a period of about one century from The 1906 San Francisco earthquake till The 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, in the light of the international point of view. It has been found that the problem of shear failure of short columns, which had been obvious since The 1968 Tokachi-oki earthquake in Japan becomes much more serious, because most of recent earthquake damages of tall buildings are due to the failures of short columns under combined high stresses of shear and high axial force. Finally, a proposal has been made on an alternate solution to these issues, including the problem of the anchoring of logitudinal reinforcement to beam-column joints. This is based on the design philosophy of deformation capability of building structures with required yield strength determined from displacement response spectra, which requires appropriate structural layout of both longer columns and shear walls in architectural spaces.
- Keywords:
- overall collapse of buildings, story collapse of buildings, shear failure of short columns, effects of hoop reinforcement, anchoring of main reinforcement, deformation capability
