Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
Learning From Earthquakes

Moderately Damaged School Building in Van

  Figure 1. General view of the structure. Figure 2. Spalling of plaster on exterior façade of the structure.         Figure 3. Infill wall damage inside a classroom. Figure 4. Diagonal shear cracks at an infill wall inside a classroom.         Figure 5. Spalling of plaster along the interior […]

Social Security Administration Building Damages

  Figure 1. General view of the structure. Figure 2. Heavily damaged interior column.         Figure 3. Collapse of interior partition walls made of concrete blocks along the corridor. Figure 4. Spalling plaster of the exterior infill walls, and heavily damaged exterior concrete column.          

October 28th Observations from Van

As a not very atypical example, his building at beginning appear to have only non-structural damage. But it came out that there is a heavy stair damage with a loss of about 50% of the section. Such type of damages with no clear sign from outside, but with seriously impaired members inside creates a difficult situation for  street type […]

Performance of a strengthened School Building

Original shear walls of the structure along the north-south direction has honeycomb shear cracks in the first three stories with decreasing intensity. Cracks at the base are about a mm wide. Added shear walls for strengthening along the north-south direction show signs of separations at the upper beam and column interfaces for the lower two […]

Main Problem: Fundamentally Flawed Structural Designs

The area has seen a boom in building construction in the last decade, and it is obvious that they had pushed beyond the limits of conventional practice into the realm of improperly engineered and structurally flawed designs. The mistakes are fundamental and obvious. The typical mistakes are soft story, torsion, inadequate lateral strength. Captive column mistake also exists, but at much lesser […]

Earthquake Summary

  Details Sources Magnitude 7.1 USGS Time Sunday, October 23, 2011 at 10:41:21 UTC Epicenter Latitude 38.691°N Epicenter Longitude 43.497°E Depth 16 km Distances 16 km (9 miles) NNE of Van, Turkey118 km (73 miles) N of Hakkari, Turkey127 km (78 miles) SSE of Agri (Karakose), Turkey929 km (577 miles) E of ANKARA, Turkey Style […]