on Geotechnical Damage

An earthquake with a local magnitude of 5.9 occurred in Simav (Kutahya) in Western Turkey on 19 May, 2011. Although the earthquake was an intermediate scale, it caused some structural and geotechnical damage. It killed two people and injured and 85 people. This earthquake also caused some peculiar high ground motions together with strong directivity effects. A huge number of buildings was damaged and the damage to buildings were concentrated at lower floors due to cracking between frame and infill walls. Settlement of buildings and roads may imply a partial liquefaction of soil layers below the top clay layer. Many slope failures with different failure mechanisms were particularly observed on the hanging wall side of the fault. In addition, failures of embankments and retaining walls were observed in the close vicinity of the earthquake epicenter. The authors first present an overview of the geology, seismicity and characteristics of the earthquake in this article. Then examples of various structural and geotechnical damage are given and their implications are discussed