Earthquakes, Existing Buildings and Seismic Design Codes in Turkey

Abstract

From worldwide observations made after the occurrence of earthquakes, as well as the tremendous amount of experimental, analytical and numerical studies, significant contributions have been made for a better understanding of the characteristics of earthquakes, and effects of earthquakes on existing structural systems. Consequently, seismic design codes are revised in a parallel fashion by integrating new concepts towards more realistic considerations of seismic demand, seismic response and seismic capacity. In this paper, after outlining the performance of existing buildings in Turkey during recent earthquakes (particularly Kocaeli 1999 and Duzce 1999 Earthquakes), and by focusing on the observed common structural deficiencies, a brief summary of the evolution of the Turkish Seismic Design Code in the last decades is presented. It is important to note that the poor seismic performance of existing buildings in Turkey outlined in this study is not directly related to the inefficiency of the relevant seismic design codes, but rather to extremely low quality construction and the absence of a strict inspection system at the time of their construction. It should also be highlighted that the lessons learnt from the catastrophic consequences of recent earthquakes, revisions in the seismic design code and the developments in the material and workmanship characteristics have significantly improved the quality of newer constructions in Turkey in the last decade.

Effects of Material Strength on Structural Performance of Damaged RC Buildings

“…The assessment procedure aims to estimate the earthquake force demand at which the building would sustain the performance objectives. Demand spectrum, which is used in determining the performance of the building's system, shows the maximum response that a building gives against seismic activities during an earthquake [7]. Two fundamental parameters of performance based design and assessment are earthquake demand and capacity [8,9].…”

Natural Hazards - Impacts, Adjustments and Resilience

“…The building design code for earthquake was first developed in Japan to consider 10% of dead weight as the lateral load. The code procedure developed based on understanding of severe damages in strong earthquakes around the globe [4]. Seismic risk mitigation is dependent on understanding exposure and vulnerability apart from seismic hazard for which effective design provisions are required for built environment to sustain the next event [5].…”

Field testing of substandard RC buildings through forced vibration tests

“…This failure mechanism is a favourable mechanism compared to its alternative, which is known as the weak column-strong beam mechanism. Past damaging earthquakes have shown that substandard frame buildings that fail in the weak column-strong beam mechanism tend to sustain much more severe damages compared to others (Ilki and Celep 2012;Tapan et al 2013). Therefore, in order to investigate the behavior of buildings with the weak columnstrong beam mechanism using the full scale testing setup, building TB-2 was designed and constructed at the same site with building TB-1.…”