Collapse rates of reinforced concrete structures during large magnitude earthquakes: case study for Romania

Florin Pavel

doi:10.1007/s42452-021-04520-9

Abstract

This case study focuses on the evaluation of the collapse rates of various types of reinforced concrete structures (residential and industrial) as observed from the data collected in Romania after the Mw 7.4 Vrancea earthquake of March 4, 1977. The results of the analyses show that the largest collapse rates were attributed to elevated reinforced concrete silos and water tanks. Moreover, the majority of the collapsed elevated reinforced concrete water tanks were full at the moment of the seismic event. Very small collapse rates were observed for high-rise residential RC structures and for the multi-storey industrial RC structures.

Highlights

This short communication aims at evaluating the collapse rates of various reinforced concrete (RC) structures as observed from the data collected in the aftermath of the destructive Vrancea (Romania) intermediate-depth earthquake of March 4, 1977
The multi-storey industrial RC structures, elevated RC water tanks, RC silos are all situated in the southern part of Romania which was the most affected region of Romania during the Vrancea 1977 seismic event
This case study aims at evaluating the collapse rates of various structures as observed from the damage data collected after the Vrancea earthquake of March 4, 1977

Summary

Introduction

This short communication aims at evaluating the collapse rates of various reinforced concrete (RC) structures as observed from the data collected in the aftermath of the destructive Vrancea (Romania) intermediate-depth earthquake of March 4, 1977 (moment magnitude M w = 7.4 and focal depth h = 94 km). The damage data collected after the Vrancea 1977 earthquake for residential buildings in Bucharest (8 structural typologies) and Iasi (6 structural typologies) is presented in a concise manner by Balan et al [1] and Sandi [11]. Some additional damage data referring to other types of structures, namely multistory RC industrial structures [3], elevated RC water tanks [6] and RC silos [4] has been retrieved and is used in this study for evaluating the collapse rate during the Vrancea 1977 earthquake. Among the main disadvantages of empirical damage data is that the surveys performed after the earthquakes are generally focused on safety and not on damage and only

Methods

Results

Conclusion