Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969

www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

An investigation on failed or damaged reinforced

concrete structures under their own-weight in Turkey
M.Y. Kaltakci 1, M.H. Arslan *, H.H. Korkmaz 2, M. Ozturk 3

Selcuk University, Engineering and Architecture Faculty, Department of Civil Engineering, Konya, Turkey

Received 25 August 2006; accepted 1 December 2006

Available online 22 January 2007

Abstract

In Turkey, more than 90% of building stock consists of reinforced concrete buildings. The majority of Turkey’s urban
population lives in multi-story apartment blocks constructed with reinforced concrete. In addition to reinforced concrete
structure damages caused from especially last decade’s earthquakes, there were built structures most of which are unable to
carry their own-weight and are not appropriate to engineering and design criteria because of lack of interest, ignorance,
lack of inspection and supervision in Turkey. Up to now, even though there are many examples, Turkey has faced two
painful experiences in Diyarbakir Hicret Apartment totally collapsed in 1983 and caused significant casualties (93 dead)
and in Konya Zumrut Apartment in 2004 (92 dead). The casualties in these phenomenons were more than some big earth-
quakes. The most significant disadvantage of reinforced concrete buildings is that after producing RC members abolishing
detailing defaults cannot be possible. Except for structural damages caused from last big earthquakes, the existence of
some RC buildings damaged due to their own-weight and static loading rises a necessity of control and rehabilitation
of RC buildings. In the study, first of all, there is mentioned about the causes of structural damages like not obeying
the standard criteria, workmanship faults, over design loads (change in the utilization purpose of the building), insufficient
material quality and false revisions applied on the construction by the users. The effect of not considering the significant
and fundamental criteria existing especially in TEC-98 and TBC-500-2000 on system behavior is examined. Afterwards,
giving examples for reinforced concrete structures failed in a 10-year period of time only under its dead load and caused
serious life and possession losses, various analyses and experimental studies related with those structures is presented. The
samplings will be classified according to the locations of the damages occurred in load-bearing system members. Finally, at
the end of the study, damage formation causes and necessary precautions will be specified according to the results obtained
from the analytical and experimental data.
 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Structural damage; Reinforced concrete; Collapsed; Failure analysis

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 332 223 1971; fax: +90 332 241 0635.
E-mail addresses: mykal@selcuk.edu.tr (M.Y. Kaltakci), mharslan@selcuk.edu.tr, musahakanarslan@hotmail.com (M.H. Arslan),
hhk73@selcuk.edu.tr (H.H. Korkmaz), muratozturk@selcuk.edu.tr (M. Ozturk).
1
Tel.: +90 332 223 1997; fax: +90 332 241 0635.
2
Tel.: +90 332 223 1965; fax: +90 332 241 0635.
3
Tel.: +90 332 223 1971; fax: +90 332 241 0635.

1350-6307/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engfailanal.2006.12.005
 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969 963

1. Introduction

Load and strength coefficients are used for the calculations of reinforced concrete buildings due to the var-
iability of the strength of the construction and the loads carried by the construction. These coefficients increase
the loads acting on the construction with a certain amount of nearly 50% and decrease the present strength of
the construction with nearly 35%; thus the building became designed with 2–2.5 times safer.
In recent years, constructioning increased considerably in Turkey-like rapidly developing countries whose
populations present increasing trends. The constructioning with reinforced concrete is usually preferred in
Turkey due to faster supplying of material and workmanship in comparison with the steel structures. The
95% of existing buildings in Turkey’s cities are formed from reinforced concrete constructions. The uncon-
trolled-structures were come into existence along with the increasing constructioning. This lack of control
showed itself with the Hicret apartment building failed due to its own weight in Diyarbakır in 1983 with
93 life losses and the disaster of Zumrut Apartment Building [1] also failed due to its own weight in Konya
in 2004 with 92 life losses. Both of them failed under their own weights. The number of people died in these
buildings is greater than the life losses occurred due to some massive earthquakes happened in Turkey [2].
In this study, there were given examples to the buildings existing in Turkey and failed due to their own
weights or had heavy damages. The damage types and causes of these examples were taken into consideration
separately. The observed behaviors were examined with respect to the analytical studies executed on them. At
the end of the investigations, there were determined many buildings having the risk of complete failure under
their own weights, and the indispensability of taking required precautions immediately for these types of
buildings was clearly understood.

2. Damaged or completely failed building examples

2.1. Example 1: Altinbasak apartment building

Two basement columns of Altinbasak apartment building (Fig. 1) suddenly cracked in October 10th, 2004
due to creep effect related to the excessive axial load. A heavy damage occurred at the building consisting of a
basement floor + a ground floor + 5 normal floors and existing in a 500 m distance away from the failed Zum-
rut apartment building (Figs. 2 and 3). Right after the event took place, the building was emptied at once and
the aforementioned columns were pended.
The investigations and studies carried on the building indicated that the columns seen in Fig. 1 cracked
because of the insufficiencies of the member cross-sections and material qualities [3]. Although each column
has 30 · 95 cm dimensions in the project, they have in situ dimensions of 20 · 90 cm. Similarly, while the

Fig. 1. General view of Altinbasak apartment building.

964 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969

Fig. 2. Heavy damage due to creep occurred on the basement floor columns of Altinbasak apartment building.

Fig. 3. Basement floor S9 column damage.

predicted characteristic concrete strength in the project was 140 kg/cm2, the tests performed on the specimens
taken from the building presented that value as 73 kg/cm2. These insufficiencies were the basic reasons of the
heavy damage (Fig. 4). The minimum compressive strength of concrete should be 200 kg/cm2 according to
TBC-500 [4] and TEC-2006 [5].
As it is known, according to the performed experimental researches, the column can carry load up to the 0.8
value of Nd/Nr ratio (axial load of the column/axial load capacity of the column); however if this value is
exceeded, the column will crack in a brittle manner due to the excessive increase of creep deformations. After
modeling the building in the computer medium, the Nd/Nr ratios of the cracked columns were determined
greater than 1 which proves the relationship of the cause of the damage with the creep effect (Fig. 5).
The corresponding influence diagrams of the columns seen in Fig. 6 presents what kind of a critical situa-
tion was reached with the lack of concrete quality and by not obeying the project?

2.2. Example 2: Sirinyurt apartment building

In 28th July, 2006, cracks were occurred on some of the basement floor columns of the Sirinyurt apartment
building (Fig. 7) constructed in 1981 in the Selcuklu District of Konya and formed from a basement floor + 5
normal floors (Figs. 8 and 9). The researches carried on the building showed that the building has 2 entries and
 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969 965

Fig. 4. Taking core samples from the vertical members.

Fig. 5. The SAP2000 model [6] of Altinbasak apartment building.

Fig. 6. Corresponding influence diagram of the S8-S9 columns of the basement floor of Altinbasak apartment building.
966 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969

Fig. 7. General view of Sirinyurt apartment building.

Fig. 8. Damage occurred at the column-beam connections of the Sirinyurt apartment building.

Fig. 9. Damage due to creep effect occurred at the columns of the Sirinyurt apartment building.
 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969 967

20 flats and its load carrying system was formed from masonry. First entry was built with half-carcass system
that damages occurred especially at the column-beam connections of the columns existing at this part of the
building. The building was emptied due to the potential danger depending on these damages in terms of life
and goods safety. Having the stirrup spacing of nearly 30 cm resulted in the buckling of the longitudinal rein-
forcements of the columns of this example whose concrete went off completely and became unavailable. The
stirrup spacing at the confinement region is emphasized to be less than the one third of that value in the related
codes.
The conversations made with the residing people in that building indicated that the building was in that
condition for a few years and a consensus could not be provided for the strengthening of the building.

2.3. Example 3: Tekin building society

One of the nine co-operative buildings designed in 14th June, 1989 failed completely in 21st January, 1993.
All the buildings including the failed one have the same building system characteristics of basement + ground
floor + 3 normal floors (masonry construction). At the end of the performed investigations, the following find-
ings were observed; the workmanship of stone usage at the basement was inappropriate; the mortar used for
the brick walls was insufficient i.e. having very low strength; especially in brick blocks, the vertical pointings
were remained undone; the lentos over the door spacings were inadequate and placed casually; there were no
cross-beams at the 1st floor walls; the staircase slab thickness measured as 12 cm was insufficient; the parts of
the load-carrying reinforced concrete beams, sitting on the brick walls were absent in many places [7] (Fig. 10).

2.4. Example 4: The industrial construction

The foundations of the industrial construction failed in the organized industrial region of Afyon City were
made up of reinforced concrete and the upper structure was produced by using steel construction. The exterior
walls of the factory construction which are not load-bearing were built with bricks. In Turkey, besides the
damages of industrial constructions which are met during the last earthquakes, there were encountered con-
structions failed due to their own weights [8]. Here, the system formed by the combination of foundation –
load-bearing system twisted around the foundation. Diagonal shear cracks have occurred due to the out-
of-plane behavior at the no-load-bearing brick walls (Fig. 11).

2.5. Example 5: Dormitory construction

The exterior side columns of this building did not suffer any damage during the 17th August, 1999 Kocaeli
and 12th November, 1999 Düzce earthquakes that are the largest earthquakes Turkey lived in recent years;

Fig. 10. Completely failed building of the Tekin building society.

968 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969

Fig. 11. The industrial construction failed by twisting around the foundation.

however they went into serious damages due to the own weight of the building in year 2005. The additional
three floors built on the first two floors of the construction have been connected to the existing load-bearing
system by using reinforced concrete cantilevers. These cantilevers transfer their loads to the foundation with

Fig. 12. Exterior column damages of the construction.

 M.Y. Kaltakci et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 14 (2007) 962–969 969

the columns subsequently built for carrying the additional upper structure of the construction. The damages
occurred on these columns that there were seen cracks and openings at 2–3 cm levels (Fig. 12).

3. Results

Certain basic considerations should be concerned for the prevention of abovementioned damages and fail-
ures occurring due to weak construction quality. Even the construction was very well designed; the obedience
to the project and the design rules during the construction stage is the most important one. Because of this, an
effective control mechanism should be established in rapidly developing and growing countries like Turkey.
The damages in the mentioned examples can be prevented by using methods and findings all of whose accu-
racies were proved with technical investigations. So, this type of studies is important for comprehending and
understanding the occurred damages that the same mistakes should not be repeated. Although 92 people died
due to the failure of Zumrut apartment building in 2004, unfortunately, the dwelling of tens of people in this
defective building for a long period of time is the proof of people ignorant about the constructions and struc-
tural safety. The basis of the infrastructure studies to be performed on the evaluation or strengthening (if nec-
essary) of present building stocks of the governments should be making people conscious about the
fundamental information of constructions.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank to SU – BAP (Project No: 06701199) due to their monetary contributions during the
preparation stage of this paper. In this study, some photographs about Sirinyurt and Altinbasak apartment
buildings were taken from Selcuklu Municipality, Dr. N. Kara and Dr. R. Sezer. The authors also thank
for their supports.

References

[1] Kaltakci MY. Konya civil engineer’s technical expert report and appendices pertaining to Zumrut apartment building failed in
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[2] Cagatay I. Experimental evaluation of building damages in recent earthquakes in Turkey. Eng Fail Anal 2005;12(3):440–52.
[3] Kara N, Yıldız M, ve Sezer R. Civil engineer’s technical expert report and appendices pertaining to Altınbasak apartment building
existing in Selcuklu County of Konya City, Turkey [in Turkish]; 2005.
[4] TBC-500. Requirements for design and construction of reinforced concrete structures, TSE, Ankara; 2000.
[5] Turkish Earthquake Code (TEC). Regulations on structures constructed in disaster regions, ministry of public works and settlement,
Ankara; 2006.
[6] SAP2000. Structural analysis program, nonlinear version 7.12, computer and structures, Inc. Berkeley, CA, USA; 2000.
[7] Karaduman M, Kaltakci MY, Umucalilar A. Civil engineer’s technical expert report and appendices pertaining to Tekin co-operative
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[8] Kara N, Sezer R, Arslan MH. Civil engineer’s technical expert report and appendices pertaining to Konya Seramik Factory, Sarayonu,
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