Abstract
The 2010 Mw = 8.8 earthquake in Chile subjected thousands of modern buildings to strong shaking. The 15-story, residential, Torre Alto Rio building was the only modern reinforced concrete building over ten stories to collapse. Since the concrete building code used in Chile is based on ACI 318-95, it is a valuable exercise to assess the performance of this building and to identify possible reasons for collapse. Potential reasons for collapse were studied using post-earthquake observed damage, structural drawings, and nonlinear static and dynamic response analyses. Analysis results indicate that collapse was likely influenced by a number of factors, including flexural-compression failure at the web boundary of T-shaped walls below discontinuities on the east side of the building, shear damage in walls across the central corridor at the first level, and tensile fracture and splice failure of the wall boundary and web vertical reinforcement at the ground line on the west side of the building.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1397-1425 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Earthquake Spectra |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Aug 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
Funding
The authors would like to thank the many individuals from the US and Chile who participated in and generously contributed to the EERI reconnaissance effort. Special appreciation is extended to Professor Patricio Bonelli at the Federico Santa Maria Technical University, and Professor Fernando Yanez and Assistant Professor Leonardo Massone at the University of Chile, for providing information and valuable comments. Finally, the authors acknowledge Professor Jack Moehle and Ph.D. student Ahmet Can Tanyeri at the University of California, Berkeley, for sharing information and ideas, and for working closely on the nonlinear model development. Travel funds or the second author were provided by the EERI Learning From Earthquakes program (NSF CMMI-0758529) and by NEEScomm (NSF CMMI-0927178). Opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent those of the sponsor or others mentioned. Travel funds or the second author were provided by the EERI Learning From Earthquakes program (NSF CMMI-0758529) and by NEEScomm (NSF CMMI-0927178)
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| NEEScomm | |
| NSF CMMI-0927178 | |
| National Science Foundation | CMMI-0758529, CMMI-0927178 |
| Earthquake Engineering Research Institute | NSF CMMI-0758529 |
