The earthquake which occurred on April 20, 1965 in Shizuoka Prefecture, was not so severe but only moderate and caused minor damage to wooden houses, roads, railways, etc. However, the most remarkable damage caused by this earthquake was the failure of window glass in some reinforced concrete buildings, and the question has arrisen what the main reason for the failure was. This report presents the results of investigation including the damage inspection, the measurement of natural periods of buildings, the estimated interstory displacement, etc. It is concluded from the investigation that the glass with high percentage of failure has something in common with "steel sash", "fixed" and "hardened putty". This means that because of "fixed" the deformation of structure was directly transmitted to the sash, and because of "hardened putty" there was no clearance between glass and sash. It was first considered that the failure occurced becouse the large amount of interstory displacement due to long natural period determined the large displacement to window glass. However, the period measurement revealed that the damaged buildings did not have a very long period, and the estimated story displacements are ranged between 1/5000 and 1/1000 in angle which could have been absorbed if there was some clearance between glass and sash.
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