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Classroom: Learning Earthquake Design and Construction 7. How Buildings Twist During Earthquakes?
Classroom: Learning Earthquake Design and Construction 7. How Buildings Twist During Earthquakes?
Starting from August 2004, Resonance is publishing in the Classroom section, a series
of short articles, ‘Earthquake Tips’, related to earthquakes, their effects on civil
structures, and design and construction of earthquake resistant buildings. The concepts
are clearly explained with sketches and analogies. We hope the Resonance readers will
benefit from this series of articles.
Earthquake Tips have been brought out by the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT
Kanpur and sponsored by Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council,
New Delhi, India. These articles are reproduced here with permission from IIT
Kanpur and BMTPC, New Delhi.
C V R Murty
Indian Institute of Technology
Learning Earthquake Design and Construction
Kanpur, Kanpur 208 016, India 7. How Buildings Twist During Earthquakes?
Email:eqtips@iitk.ac.in
Earthquake
Identical Vertical Ground
Members Movement
swing on the tree. This time let the Figure 3: Even if vertical members are placed
Earthquake
Ground
Shaking
placed vertical members). If this twist cannot be avoided, special Figure 5 (left). One-side
calculations need to be done to account for this additional shear open ground storey build-
forces in the design of buildings; the Indian seismic code (IS ing twists during earth-
quake shaking.
1893, 2002) has provisions for such calculations. But, for sure,
Figure 6 (right). Vertical
buildings with twist will perform poorly during strong earthquake
members of buildings that
shaking. move more horizontally
sustain more damage.
Suggested Reading
C V R Murty
Learning Earthquake Design and Construction Indian Institute of Technology
8. What is the Seismic Design Philosophy for Buildings? Kanpur, Kanpur 208 016, India
Email:eqtips@iitk.ac.in
the life of the building itself may be only 50 or 100 years? Since
it costs money to provide additional earthquake safety in
buildings, a conflict arises: Should we do away with the design of
buildings for earthquake effects? Or should we design the buildings to
be “earthquake proof” wherein there is no damage during the strong but
rare earthquake shaking? Clearly, the former approach can lead to
a major disaster, and the second approach is too expensive.
Hence, the design philosophy should lie somewhere in between
these two extremes.
Earthquake-Resistant Buildings
(a) Under minor but frequent shaking, the main members of the
building that carry vertical and horizontal forces should not be
damaged; however building parts that do not carry load may
sustain repairable damage.
(c) Under strong but rare shaking, the main members may
Ductile
Performance
on Building
Suggested Reading
[1] F Naeim (Ed.), The Seismic Design Handbook, Kluwer Academic Pub-
lishers, Boston, USA, 2001.
[2] J Ambrose and D Vergun, Design for Earthquakes, John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., New York, 1999.
Suggestions/comments may be
sent to: eqtips@iitk.ac.in.