Characteristics of Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall Buildings Damaged During 2010 Chile Earthquake

Abstract

This article succinctly describes some statistical results on the geometry and the earthquake behavior of medium tohigh rise Chilean “fish-bone” type shear-wall buildings damaged during the February 27, Great Maule earthquake(Mw=8.8). The objective of the research summarized herein was to consolidate in one complete database all of the information on damaged buildings so as to assess their common characteristics from the point of view of seismicdesign. This paper makes the case that most of the damage took place in newer high rise buildings, caused in part by the use of ever slenderer walls in progressively taller buildings, and more importantly, was mostly the result of brittle failure in the walls at lower elevations due to high compressive loads in tall buildings, say those with more than ten stories. These findings strongly suggest that new shear wall design aspects should be incorporated inChilean seismic codes.