Analysis of the damage potential of the Kocaeli (Turkey) earthquake of 17 August 1999

The damage inflicted by the Kocaeli earthquake on structures in general, an d relatively modem RC buildings in particular, is perhaps the worst seen in many years, and certainly the worst in Europe in recent history. Early rep orts attributed the damage to construction quality and lack of seismic deta iling. The purpose of this shore paper is nor to dispute this claim, but ra ther to widen the discussion and shed light on other possible contributing factors. It is indicated, by well-verified inelastic dynamic analysis, that the demand imposed by some of the records measured in the severely affecte d area is exceptionally high. A full-scale model structure recently tested at the Joint Research Centre, Italy, is used for comparison purposes. It ha s withstood experimentally demand imposed by an artificial record generated to represent a European earthquake with a 975 years return period (well ov er the code-specified Limits of 475 years) with limited damage. Analysis ha s also indicated that the frame would have easily survived the Arleta fire station record from Northridge in 1994. The structure would have certainly collapsed if subjected to the records of Yarimca from the epicentral area, or Duzce close to the fault rupture, both of the Kocaeli earthquake. The de formation demand imposed on RC structures similar to that considered in thi s paper is much higher than chat implied by modern European codes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.