Main Reasons of Structural Wall Collapse in Chile 2010 and New Zealand 2011 - Implications For Ecuador

Previous works on the earthquakes of Chile 2010 and New Zealand 2011 indicate regular behavior of reinforced concrete buildings with structural walls. However, some buildings suffered significant damage associated with global or local collapse due to diagonal cracking and flexural-compression failure. Structural walls located at the ground floor presented tension-compression failure was probably provoked by high axial forces at the walls extreme ends which could cause this failure in places where there is a lack of bracing and confinement.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the behavior of the reinforced concrete structural wall buildings that failed in the mentioned earthquakes, and identify some of the main reasons that caused the damage as an attempt to improve engineering practices in Ecuador to prevent catastrophic events.