More earthquake analysis

The Australian Earthquake Engineering Society web site has a follow-up report on observations of Christchurch, from Nawawi Chouw, Hong Hao and Helen Goldsworthy.

The title of the report is Some observations of damage in the 22nd February Christchurch earthquake. It is a brief description of the range of damage that occurred as a result of the earthquake, and observations on why some of the damage occurred. The following gives one view on why certain buildings failed:
As will be shown below, the damage was mainly associated with inappropriate design and construction practices similar to those that have been observed in many previous earthquakes. These include structural irregularity in both horizontal and vertical directions, lack of continuity, poor anchorage and connectivity of structural components, and lack of separation between adjacent structures.
It is a mainly visual report, well illustrated, with the images clearly showing the effect on land, buildings, and other structures of vertical and lateral movements, and liquifaction, produced by the earthquake. Despite being a technical report it is written in a way that anyone can understand the content.

There are examples and photographs from the inner city, parts of the river near the city, Fitzgerald Ave., some suburbs, and Lyttelton.

The Australian Earthquake Engineering Society web site is here (with lots of other, earlier, reports on the home page), and this latest report can be downloaded from here (note: it is a big PDF file at 3.8 MB).
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