Earthquakes and Structural Damages

Abstract

Earthquakes are the most destructive natural hazards throughout human history. Hundreds of thousand people lost their lives and loss of billions of dollars’ properties occurred in these disasters. Occurred medium or high-intensity magnitude earthquakes in last twenty years showed that these loses continue. For reinforced concrete (R/C) buildings, inappropriate design such as soft and weak stories, strong beam–weak column, short column, hammering, unconfined gable wall and in-plane/out-of-plane movement of the walls causes damages. These are the main reasons. In addition to this, low quality of structural materials, poor workmanship, lack of engineering services, and construction with insufficient detailing of the structural elements are the another reasons of damages. Main reasons of masonry building damages in terms of design faults can be shown as heavy earthen roofs, inappropriate detailing of wall to wall connection and wall to roof connection, absence of bond beams, large openings. However, construction of buildings by using local materials with poor workmanship on the base of traditional rules is the other reason of failures for these buildings. In this book chapter, earthquakes and reasons of damages arose from earthquakes for reinforced concrete and masonry structures were presented. In addition to this, appropriate solutions are suggested.