Location
San Diego, California
Presentation Date
28 Mar 2001, 4:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Abstract
A review is made of geotechnical factors that played an important role in three recent earthquake-induced failures, two of which were deadly. The first two catastrophes concern two five-storey hotels that collapsed during the “Alkyonides earthquake” of 24 February 1981 (M=6.7) and the “Egion earthquake” of 15 June 1995 (M=6.2). The third failure is the collapse of a multi-storey factory caused by the “Athens earthquake” of 7 September 1999 (M=5.9). In the first two catastrophes, ground subsidence was estimated by two different methods and was found to be of the order of 0.13 to 0.46 m. These estimates are based on tentative assumptions that should be reviewed and possibly revised. Considerable differential settlements must have existed before the earthquake, as there were no basements that would have attenuated vertical loading and so even a moderate additional differential settlement could cause failure. In the third case, the structure was built near the edge of a steep slope of clayey soil. The co-seismic shear displacement caused the footings resting on the sliding mass to settle, thus causing severe distortions to the structure.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2001 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Stamatopoulos, Aris C.; Stamatopoulos, Constantine A.; and Aneroussis, Stavros G., "Geotechnical Factors in Recent Earthquake-Induced Structural Failures in Greece" (2001). International Conferences on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics. 2.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icrageesd/04icrageesd/session10/2
Included in
Geotechnical Factors in Recent Earthquake-Induced Structural Failures in Greece
San Diego, California
A review is made of geotechnical factors that played an important role in three recent earthquake-induced failures, two of which were deadly. The first two catastrophes concern two five-storey hotels that collapsed during the “Alkyonides earthquake” of 24 February 1981 (M=6.7) and the “Egion earthquake” of 15 June 1995 (M=6.2). The third failure is the collapse of a multi-storey factory caused by the “Athens earthquake” of 7 September 1999 (M=5.9). In the first two catastrophes, ground subsidence was estimated by two different methods and was found to be of the order of 0.13 to 0.46 m. These estimates are based on tentative assumptions that should be reviewed and possibly revised. Considerable differential settlements must have existed before the earthquake, as there were no basements that would have attenuated vertical loading and so even a moderate additional differential settlement could cause failure. In the third case, the structure was built near the edge of a steep slope of clayey soil. The co-seismic shear displacement caused the footings resting on the sliding mass to settle, thus causing severe distortions to the structure.
