The Maule (Chile) earthquake of February 27, 2010: Development of hazard, site specific ground motions and back-analysis of structures

Abstract

The Maule (Chile) earthquake of 27 February, 2010 has caused severe disruption and economic losses. With a magnitude of 8.8, it has been recorded as one of the largest earthquakes of the last century. The ground motion records from large subduction earthquakes, such as the Chile earthquake, are sparse. The number of accelerograms that recorded the strong ground motion was relatively few and only a few of these ground motions were released to engineering community. One of the objectives of this paper is to develop site specific ground motions that take into account the particular characteristics of this major earthquake. These are proposed to the engineering community as representative ground motions based on the best available data. The second objective of the paper is to investigate, using numerical tools, some typical failures observed in the engineered buildings and bridges. Although, in general engineered structures performed very well and the majority of failures, hence losses, were to non-engineered structures, some repeated deficiencies in structural design were observed. The developed hazard and site specific ground motions are used as inputs for inelastic dynamic analysis of advanced finite element building and bridge models. The results are processed to explain quantitatively the structural deficiencies observed in the field.