Earthquake Response Analysis of Buildings at The Union Territory of Chandigarh, India, by using Building Vibration Observations due to Weak Earthquake Ground Motions

Abstract:

Understanding the vulnerability of built environment in highly seismic areas is an important component of earthquake risk mitigation. As part of Indo-Japan collaborative research project (DISANET) sponsored by JST and JICA, six sets of building vibration sensors have been installed in the Union Territory of Chandigarh, India.

The Union Territory of Chandigarh, India is located at South of the Himalayan Frontal Belt (HFT) is in zone IV of the seismic zone map of India (BIS, 2007). In past few decades, this area has experienced several minor earthquakes and a few moderate earthquakes. In spite of being in high seismic zone, most of the buildings in Chandigarh are designed and constructed for gravity loads only disregarding seismic forces. Such kind of buildings may deteriorate in strength even when they are subjected to minor earthquakes.

To understand the response of buildings to micro-tremors, vibration sensors were installed in the building of Department of Geology of Panjab University in July 2012. Subsequently 5 more buildings were instrumented by January 2014. For each building, in order to capture the overall vibration of building during earthquake, vibration sensors of 8 or 10 units are installed to the ground floor, top floor and middle floor of the building. These sensors are continuously monitoring the building vibration and recording all data which include the weak ground motion occurring from near to far earthquakes.

Through these sensors, over 20 minor ground motions have been recorded during last two years. Even in these weak ground motions, it was possible to confirm the state of the building response caused by earthquakes.

In this presentation, we will introduce some building vibration records caused by the weak ground motion of the earthquakes and discuss the important insights drawn from analysis of recorded data.