Building Damage Caused by Fault Displacement in Recent Fault Zone Earthquakes and Effective Measures

Abstract

This paper reports on examples of building damage caused by fault displacement from past active fault zone earthquakes and effective fault displacement countermeasures. Conventional fault displacement countermeasures have generally avoided active faults. However, recurrence period of active faults is extremely long (several thousand years or more), and it is generally difficult to accurately determine in advance the location and amount of fault slip and fault types such as transverse and longitudinal displacement on the scale necessary for building design. On the other hand, studies of recent damaging earthquakes (e.g., the 1999 Taiwan Chi-Chi earthquake and the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake) have shown that buildings with earthquake-resistant design can significantly reduce damage even directly above a surface fault rupture. For this reason, a variety of fault displacement measures have become available in recent years and have been implemented in building construction and retrofitting.