BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0190

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Retaining walls at the port, where the historic stone covering the concrete has collapsed".

BeckerFraserPhotos May 2012 photograph 154

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Protective wall of shipping containers below the Sumner cliffs".

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0313

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph showing the interior of an attic apartment revealed by a partially collapsed wall.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0315

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph showing the interior of an attic apartment revealed by a partially collapsed wall.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0854

Images, UC QuakeStudies

An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Cliff collapse at Redcliffs and the protective container wall".

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0294

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of a partially collapsed wall showing some of the interior of The Mexican Cafe with scaffolding inside.

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0849

Images, UC QuakeStudies

An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Container wall protecting the main road to Sumner from the cliff collapse".

BeckerFraserPhotos February 2012 photograph 0851

Images, UC QuakeStudies

An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The container wall protecting the main road to Sumner from the cliff collapse".

Seismic performance of a six storey reinforced masonry building during the…

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

During the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011, several midrise buildings of Reinforced Concrete Masonry (RCM) construction achieved performance levels in the range of life safety to near collapse levels. These buildings were subjected to seismic demands higher than the building code requirements of the time and higher than the current New Zealand Loadings Standard (NZS-1170.5:2004). Structural damage to these buildings has been documented and is currently being studied to establish lessons to be learned from their performance and how to incorporate these lessons into future RCM design and construction practices. This paper presents a case study of a six story RCM building deemed to have reached the near collapse performance level. The RCM walls on the 2nd floor failed due to toe crushing reducing the building’s lateral resistance in the east-west direction. A nonlinear dynamic analysis on a 3D model was conducted to simulate the development of the governing failure mechanism. Preliminary analysis results show that the damaged walls were initially under large compression forces from gravity loads which caused increase in their lateral strength and reduced their ductility. After toe crushing failure developed, axial instability of the model was prevented by a redistribution of gravity loads.