A

rticle

Earthquake Hazards and Basic Concepts

of Seismic Resistant Design of Structures
By Ir. Ngu Kik Koong and Ir. Loew Ket Won, Operation Directors of Sepakat Setia Perunding Sdn Bhd.

rior to the Sumatra-Andaman

Earthquake of December 26, 2004 ,
we Malaysians were not too
concern about earthquake hazards. This
was simply because earthquake had not
inflicted any severe property damage or
casualty in Malaysia in the recent recorded
history.
The
Sumatra-Andaman
Earthquake which was of moment
magnitude 9.15 was very much different
compared to previous earthquakes
experienced by Malaysians. The huge
tsunami wave generated by the
earthquake caused colossal destructions
and took a very heavy toll of lives for the
11 countries including Malaysia bordering
the Indian Ocean. The wave reached as
high as 30m and traveled more than
2000km to reach the African continent.
The hardest hit areas in Malaysia were the
northern coastal states such as Penang,
Perak, Kedah and Perlis. The human death
toll in Malaysia was reported to be more
than 50. Significant damages of marine
structures were also reported especially in
Pulau Langkawi. Tremors were felt and
caused panic for those in the high-rise
buildings located in the western states of
the peninsular.
Barely three months after the 2004 megathrust earthquake, another great
earthquake of magnitude 8.7 struck
northern Sumatra again. The quake was
the second largest in the world since 1964
and only surpassed by the 2004
earthquake. The epicenter was very near
to the earlier one (about 160 kilometers)
and was along the same Sunda Trench
fault line.The focal depth of the quake was
approximately 32 kilometers which was
similar to the 2004 earthquake and
considered to be very shallow. Although
there was no major tsunami this time, the
earthquake again shook buildings located
on the western part of the peninsular. The
tremor caused the high-rise buildings in
the capital and the surrounding towns to
be evacuated.

span of three months have shaken many

Malaysians. They began to wonder
whether our structures can withstand the
onslaught of an even bigger seismic event
in future (if there is going to be one). The
intention of this article is thus to shed
some light onto the earthquake
phenomenon and hazards, and how we
can design our structures to safely meet
the seismic demands.

high, the structure may experience very

high seismic forces and cause the
structural capacity to be exceeded. The
seismic force generated in the structure
can be exacerbated by resonant effect if
the fundamental frequency of the
structure coincides with the predominant
frequency of the site. Structures
constructed without consideration of
seismic hazards are in general more
vulnerable to ground shaking during a

Earthquake Hazards
Earthquake can cause massive
destructions and loss of human lives. The
hazards caused by an earthquake can be
summarized as follows.
a) Ground Shaking
When a major earthquake strikes, the
ground shakes violently and randomly
and causes the structure to vibrate and
inertial forces would be generated
internally in the structure. The horizontal
shear force would displace and weaken
the structure and the additional vertical
loads induced may cause the structure to
suffer severe damage or even collapse.
The collapse of structure may take place if
the structure has insufficient capacity to
meet the seismic demands. Structures are
normally designed to support vertical
loads and lateral loads due to wind or
traffic. If the ground acceleration level is
Photo 1 showing collapse of viaduct during
Kobe Earthquake

Photo 2 showing leaning of

building due to soil
liquefaction

Two major earthquakes and numerous

aftershocks occurring within a short time
90
4 t h

Q u a r t e r

2 0 0 5

rticle

to build a structure over an active fault

line. In the United States for instance, the
Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning
Act was passed in 1972 after the San
Fernando Earthquake to prevent
construction of buildings used for human
occupancy on the surface trace of active
faults. However, structures located at
some distance away from the fault line are
not susceptible to this kind of hazard. The
hazard due to this fault rupture can thus
be easily avoided.

Photo 3 showing
building collapse
caused by
earthquake
shaking

(c) Flood

Photo 4 showing a
house split off by
surface fault rupture

The third hazard of earthquake is flooding.

When dams or levees are damaged by the
fault rupture, the water from the reservoir
or river may inundate the surrounding
areas. Similar catastrophic outcome can
be expected when an earthquake
generates big tsunami waves like the
recent Sumatra-Andaman earthquake
which produced wave as high as 30m. The
wave traveled as far as Africa and inflicted
significant damages there. Cities located
near the coastlines and exposed to the
ocean are in general very vulnerable to
the onslaught of tsunami as
demonstrated by the recent event. The
photo below shows the extent of flooding

major seismic event. However, certain

types of structures such as those
equipped with special moment resisting
frames are inherently more seismic
resistant than others such as masonry
structures.
Structural damage can also be induced by
foundation failure as the result of soil
liquefaction. Soil liquefaction is a process
by which soil below the water table
temporarily lose its stiffness and strength
and behaves like viscous fluid rather than
solid. This behavior can be triggered by
severe ground shaking during a seismic
event. Ground shaking causes distortion
of soil granular structure and densification
of the soil will take place.The densification
increases the pore-water pressure
between the grains if drainage cannot
take place fast enough to dissipate the
pressure. When the pore pressure builds
up and approaching the weight of
overlying soil, the soil behaves essentially
as fluid and thus liquefaction occurs. Soil
types susceptible to this phenomenon are
clay-free deposits of sands and silts, even
gravel do liquefies occasionally. This
phenomenon can cause the structure to

Photo 5 showing
flooding caused by
tsunami

settle excessively, and the structure may

tilt or collapse altogether. It can trigger
slope failure if the underlying soil is prone
to liquefaction.

in one of the many locations hit by the

tsunami.

(b) Ground Displacement

Another major hazard of earthquake is

fire. When the gas lines are broken by
collapsing structures, big fire may be
ignited and burns for days. This situation
is exacerbated when the fire engines
cannot put out the fire due to accessibility
problems. One good example is the 1906
San Francisco Earthquake which caused
the city to burn for three days.

The second hazard is the ground

displacement along the fault line. If a
structure straddles across the fault line,
the ground displacement due to fault
rupture can seriously distort the structure
or even split the structure into two as
shown in Photo 4. It is thus not advisable
91
4 t h

Q u a r t e r

2 0 0 5

(d) Fire

rticle

Photo 6 showing fire

caused by Kobe
Earthquake

How Does Earthquake Occur?

Earthquake can be triggered by many
sources such as volcanic eruption, testing
of nuclear device, dam failure, fault
rupture and etc. Among these, the most
common one is the fault rupture which is
responsible for the major earthquakes like
Kobe Earthquake, Sumatran Earthquake,
Loma Prieta Earthquake, Northridge
Earthquake and many others.
The earth lithosphere can be divided into
many thick tectonic plates with thickness
up to 150km and the major ones are
African, Antarctic, Australian, Eurasian,
North American, South American, Pacific,
Cocos, Nazca and Indian Plates. These
plates are moving in relative to each other
at the slow rate of a few cm a year. This
differential motion creates discontinuities
along the plate boundaries as well as
within the plate itself. These

discontinuities in the earths crust are

called faults. The faults can be categorized
into three groups namely normal faults,
strike-slip(or transform) faults and reverse
(or thrust) faults. These faults and their
motions are depicted in Figure 1.
The earthquake phenomena can be
explained using the Elastic Rebound
Theory. When the tectonic plates move,
the movement is usually restrained by the
friction force at certain points along the
fault line. Potential energy starts to
accumulate over the years until it is
sufficient to overcome the friction force.
When this happen, sudden release of
energy will take place and the energy will
travel through the soil as seismic waves.
There are four types of seismic waves i.e. p,
s, Love and Raleigh waves. These waves
emanate from the epicenter and travel
with different velocities in different
directions. Depending on the soil
condition through which the waves travel,
their magnitudes can be attenuated or
amplified. However, it tends to diminish
over the distance it travels as the energy is
absorbed by the surrounding soil. Hence,
structures located near to the epicenter
would normally suffer the most.

Different types of faults produce

accelerations in different directions. For
example, strike-slip fault would mainly
cause the ground to move horizontally.
The normal or reverse fault would
produce ground motion with significant
vertical acceleration component in
addition to horizontal acceleration.
However, for a location beyond certain
distance say 50km away from the
epicenter, the acceleration is mainly in the
horizontal directions. This is reflected in
the latest AASHTO Guide Specifications
which stipulated that the vertical
acceleration effects need not be
considered for locations beyond 50km of
any active fault.
Basic Design Principles of Earthquake
Resistant Structures
In order to minimize damage due to
earthquake, some basic design principles
or guidelines need to be followed when
deciding on the structural configuration
and layout. These basic principles are
summarized as follows:

Besides lateral loads, the additional

vertical loads due to vertical component
of ground acceleration can produce
detrimental effects on the stability of the
structure. This is especially critical when
the lateral loads displace the columns or
walls laterally and the vertical loads can
increase bending of these elements due
to P-Delta effect. This effect can give the
final blow to the structure if not
designed properly

Strike slip fault

Figure 1
92
4 t h

Q u a r t e r

2 0 0 5

The total mass of the structure should be

minimized. According to Newtons
Second Law, force is the product of mass
and acceleration. Hence, for constant
acceleration, lateral inertial force
induced by ground shaking is directly
proportional to the mass of the
structure. The mass mentioned includes
structural and non-structural mass.

The structure should be simple,

symmetric and regular in plan and
elevation. This type of structure would
result in the coincidence of its plans
geometric center with the center of
mass. This would prevent unnecessary
rotation of the structure when subject to
ground shaking. The distribution of
inertial forces resulting from earthquake
would be more or less uniform in
nature.

rticle

Mass, stiffness, strength and ductility

should be distributed evenly to avoid
formation of soft stories. By doing so,
the earthquake resistant capacity can
be increased as the key structural
members would have more or less
equal share of the seismic demands.

The structure should be detailed to

constrain inelastic deformation to
occur at the desired regions. For
example, for the bridge structure, the
piers are detailed to have the plastic
hinges formed at the top and bottom
of the columns. For buildings, the hinge
should generally be restricted to the
beams except at the base.

It is essential to provide ductility to the

structure so that inelastic deformation
can occur to absorb the excess energy
over the elastic limit.Typically, buildings
are designed to theoretical
accelerations of 5% to 20% gravity
(after applying the reduction factor) in
high seismic zones. Real earthquakes
can produce accelerations well in
excess of this level. The structures can
still resist the earthquake adequately
due to the material property called
ductility. Construction material such as
steel has this property and it can only
fail after significant inelastic
deformation. Reinforced concrete
structures if well detailed would also
possess this attribute.
The structure should have balanced
stiffness and strength between the
interconnecting members and the
supports.

Design Requirements for

Earthquake Resistance
Many design specifications or codes are
available to design structures for
earthquake resistance such as UBC 97,
IBC2000, EC8, AASHTO LRFD Design
Specifications and etc..The trend is moving
towards performance based design
whereby the multilevel performance
objectives of the structure are to be
achieved in order to satisfy the design
requirements. For example, in the latest
AASHTO Guide Specifications, the
performance objectives are as follows:
Other codes may give different names to
the design earthquakes such as in the
Caltrans Specifications, MCE is called SEE

(Safety Evaluation Earthquake) and EE is

called FEE (Functional Evaluation
Earthquake). The return periods of the
design earthquake vary for different design
codes. For example, the return period for
Once-in-a-lifetime seismic event in
Japanese Code is 30 to 40 years as
compared to 150 years for the Expected
Earthquake in AASHTO Guide
Specifications. Of course, in the case of
Malaysia, the performance objectives need
not be the same since the ground motion
induced by earthquake is quite moderate.
In the authors opinion, single level
performance objective would be sufficient.
By examining the above performance
objectives, it is clear that damage due to
the design seismic event is acceptable
provided the structure has a low
probability of collapsing and any damage
should not result in loss of human lives.
However, the owner can always set a higher
performance objective if he is willing to
invest more to reduce the risks.
Some Important Concepts of
Seismic Design
(a) Response Spectrum Curve
In Malaysia, when an engineer designs a
structure, the easiest way for computing
seismic load is to multiply the total weight
of structure by the appropriate
acceleration coefficient without applying
any ductility factor. This procedure may be
alright sometimes such as for buildings less
than say three stories in height using light
frame construction but lead to erroneous
results when designing high rise structures.
The important concept is that the
movement of the structure is very much
different than that of the ground and the
acceleration experienced by the structure
varies with height. The highest building
level would normally experience highest
acceleration compared with the lower
levels. The only time the accelerations are
approximately the same throughout the

structure and with that of the ground is

when the structure is very rigid (that means
low height and huge structural members),
or if the structure is totally embedded in
the soil. Based on dynamic analysis such as
elastic response spectrum analysis, the
acceleration of the structure at the highest
level can be as high as a few times that of
the ground depending on the dynamic
characteristics of the soil and the structure.
However, more realistic analysis by nonlinear method taking into consideration
ductility of the structure would normally
produce lower acceleration. That is the
reason a reduction factor to account for the
structural ductility is normally applied to
bring down the seismic design forces
based on elastic analysis.
A typical design elastic response spectra
curve as can be found in UBC97 is shown in
Figure 2. The parameters Ca, Cv, To and Ts
shown on the curve are site specific. They
depend on the soil profile of the site where
the structure is to be located. Once these
four parameters are decided, the elastic
response spectrum curve can be
constructed. Both Ca and Cv are lower for
hard rock than for soft soil, but the increase
is faster for Cv when the soil gets softer.This
means the peak spectral acceleration
increases and spreads further to longer
period when the soil profile is not so
favorable.
(b) Plastic Hinge
In bridge design, there are two alternative
ways of determining foundation design
forces due to seismic loads: i) elastic
analysis method and ii) plastic hinge
analysis method. The analysis using plastic
hinge method usually results in significant
cost saving of foundation. Using this
method, the foundation design forces
adopted corresponds to the limiting state
when sufficient plastic hinge mechanisms
are formed at the top and bottom of the
columns so that the structure is at the point
of instability. It is thus more economical to
Performance Objectives

Probability of Exceedance (PE) for

Design Earthquake

Life Safety

Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE)

3% PE in 75 years

Service
Damage

Significant disruption
Significant

Expected Earthquake (EE)

50% PE in 75 years

Service
Damage

Immediate
Minimal

94
4 t h

Q u a r t e r

2 0 0 5

rticle

minimize
the
main
reinforcement of the column
which would cause the plastic
hinge to be formed earlier.

or higher depending on the

distance to the active faults.
Conclusion

b) Structural Fuse
For a structure, certain
components such as bridge
foundation are difficult to access
for repair works and thus it is
desirable to protect the
foundation using structural
fuses. Plastic hinge can be
considered as structural fuse
since it limits the magnitude of Figure 2 Design Responce Spectra
force transfer to the foundation.
Another example is the
abutment back-wall which may be stipulated in the latest AASHTO Guide
designed to fail at force level much lower
Specifications.
than the capacity of the foundation. When
the MCE event occurs, the back-wall is Design Practice for Seismic Loads
expected to shear off and some of the in Malaysia
seismic energy will be absorbed by the
earth behind the wall.
For structure design, Malaysia is adopting
British Standards such as BS5400, BS8110,
c) Structural Continuity
BS5958 and various other standards.
However, these standards do not have any
For earthquake resistant structure requirements on seismic loads. Due to this
especially bridges, expansion joints should deficiency, engineers normally refer to
be avoided where possible. Otherwise, AASHTO Specifications, Uniform Building
seismic restrainers may be required to tie
Code or Eurocode for design guidance.
individual structural components together
so that forces can be transmitted across the In adopting the design codes from other
joints. The main reason for the continuity is countries, one main problem engineer
that individual component may drop off normally faced is what ground acceleration
the seating at the joints and cause to be used for determining the seismic
structural failure. One example is the loads. The ground acceleration adopted
collapse of one of the upper deck of Bay varies from 0.03g up to 0.2g depending on
Bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland the importance of the structure or the
during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.
severity of outcome the structure failure
can cause. For example, Penang bridge
d) No Analysis Design Concept
used 0.075g for design of the bridge
structures, while for Bakun Hydroelectric
For regular bridges located in the low
Plant, the horizontal ground acceleration
seismic hazard areas such as Peninsular adopted was 0.1g. The same ground
Malaysia, seismic demand analysis is not acceleration has been adopted for Tanjung
required. The structure can be designed Bin Power Plant.
based on non-seismic loads such as dead
loads, superimposed dead loads, live loads, SEER (Structural Earthquake Engineering
wind loads and etc.. Capacity design
Research) has carried out seismic zone
procedure should be used for structural mapping for Peninsular Malaysia and East
detailing of the columns and structural
Malaysia. Based on their findings, for the
components connected to the columns. In
whole of Peninsular Malaysia, the ground
this procedure, the columns are detailed to acceleration of 0.03g to 0.05g is
enable plastic hinges to be formed at the
recommended. However, for East Malaysia,
desired locations. All other structural the acceleration level recommended
components and connections (to columns) increased from Sarawak towards Sabah
should be designed to resist overstrength due to presence of active faults in Sabah.
bending moments and shears of yielding
Maximum
ground
acceleration
members. The above procedure is recommended for design in Sabah is 0.15g
95
4 t h

Q u a r t e r

2 0 0 5

Earthquake can be very

catastrophic if our structures are
designed without considering
its effects. This is so for those
earthquake prone areas such as
Sumatra, Japan, Taiwan and etc.
For Peninsular Malaysia which is
subjected to low seismic
tremors, it may not be necessary
to carry out detailed seismic
analysis except for very special
structures such as dam or very
tall high rise building. However,
for East Malaysia especially Sabah, more
detailed investigation needs to be carried
out to determine the ground acceleration
prior to project implementation as there
are active faults within the state. In this case,
near source effects need to be taken into
account if the project is located within say
50km of an active fault.

REFERENCES
V.V. Bartero, Selection and
Configuration for the Superstructure,
National Information Service for
Earthquake Engineering, University of
California, Berkeley.
H. Hausammann, T. Wenk, Seismic
Bridge Design According to Eurocode
8 and SIA 160, Eleventh European
Conference
on
Earthquake
Engineering, September 6-11, 1998,
Paris, France.
Marshall Lew, Geoffrey R. Martin,What
Structural Engineers Need to Know
About Liquefaction SEAOC 1999
Convention.
Hisahiro Hiraishi, Hiroyuki Yamanouchi,
Outline and Concept of New
Japanese Seismic Code
Uniform Building Code 1997, Vol. 2,
International Conference of Building
Officials
Recommended LRFD Guidelines for
the Seismic Design of Highway
Bridges, NCHRP Project 12 49,
November 2001.

MBJ