The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Implications of recent earthquakes and research on earthquake-resistant design and construction of buildings

Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-86/03, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1986-03, 85 pages (620/B37/1986)

After an overview of the special problems inherent in the design of earthquake-resistant buildings to be constructed in regions of high seismic risk, the states of the art and practice needed to solve these problems in the U.S. are briefly discussed. Some lessons learned from recent earthquakes, particularly those in Chile and Mexico in 1985, are discussed, as are some results of integrated analytical and experimental research at the Univ. of California, Berkeley. The implications of the ground motions recorded during the 1985 Mexico and Chile earthquakes, the performance of buildings during the Mexico earthquake, and the research results previously discussed are then assessed with respect to the seismic-resistant design regulations formulated by the Applied Technology Council in ATC 3-06 and by the Seismology Committee of the Structural Engineers Assn. of California (SEAOC) in its Tentative Lateral Force Requirements. The rationality and reliability of the values suggested by the ATC for the response modification factor R and by the SEAOC Seismology Committee for the structural quality factor R subscript W are assessed in detail. Finally, two solutions are proposed for the improvement of earthquake-resistant design of buildings: an ideal (rational) method to be implemented in the future and a compromise solution that can be implemented immediately.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-86-03.pdf (7 MB)