What makes a building somewhat earthquake resistant?

Question

Although there is no way to insure protection of a building from natural disasters, what are some characteristics that may support a building or home from an earthquake?

Answer 1

-Build it on stable ground
-Stablize the ground with cement flow over loose soil or using a sticky polymer to hold the soil together(thats the better choise)
-Use a sturdy, bolted foundation
-Build cross-sections in the framing which allow the walls to move
-Use plastic-like, not glass windows
-Make it out of a combination of steel, wood, and concrete
-Reinforce walls, floors, and ceilings
-Bolt furniture in place and lock or securely close all drawers and loose objects
-Know where the damage would occur to know where to go and prevent injury

Answer 2

The natural frequency of the building should not match with the frequency of earthquakes. Do you know ones I think in California all the buildings which were built in 10 to 13 stories were destroyed leaving high rise building and shorter buildings. You can find from the past history at that place that what types of earthquake frequency will be sensed there. Accordingly we should design the building not to match with that frequency. The normal earthquake frequency is 0.5 to 15 Hz . This may differ from place to place. I live in India the city called Chennai..We are sensing the earthquake frequency of about 2 Hz normally. The civil engineers should keep it in their mind when designing the buildings.

Answer 3

Very simply, build with materials that are ductile...steel and wood as opposed to brick, mortar, and concrete.

Many wood structures survived the San Francisco earthquake on 1906 while brick structures next door were immediately reduced to rubble. Unfortunately, wood burns well.

Very sophisticated damping devices can be installed under buildings to reduce the lateral forces on tall buildings.

Answer 4

good question.

This is hard to visualize, but look at the code this way. The code uses self weight plus force of gravity times a factor for the seismic zone. Take a model of the structure, and turn it so the horizontal ground surface is now vertical. Then design all of the structure to resist this. That is, in effect, how it works, hard to visualize, but one you do it, it makes sense.

in engineering, I look at a number of factors in these decisions. The ground the structure is built on is significant. this is how it is held to the ground,

make things flexible, avoid concentration of forces, or reinforce those points. This why you bolt a house down to a foundation, but only use two bolts, and those are big bolts with a concentrated force, use 30 bolts and minimize the buildup of forces. The straps on a building try to distribute the forces instead of them being concentrated.

everything is ductile, just to certain degrees. A concrete foundation is flexible, just not as much as the wood above it. Stand on a freeway bridge and you will see how flexible concrete is. Those joints are made to slip, not concentrate and restrict the forces.

also, the goal is to prevent "catastrophic" failure. Things will fail, they will fall, but the goal is to reduce that effect. Bolt them together, strap them together, reduce the fall.

as in a car, you cannot prevent a crash, just minimize the effect with seatbelts.

Answer 5

Buildings that are made of material that are bent to bend and twist such that in their relaxed state, will settle to their pre- disturbed positions....this is why you have guessettes and mini struts as well as heat treated metals....that twist and turn instead of buckling and snapping.

Just a basic example.....but yes...materials and their manufacturing processes.

Answer 6

One method is too add supports to the corners of the steel structure of the building. So instead of having a grid like or rectangular structure, you add triangles at the corners where the structure is structurally weak.