Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dr. N. Subramanian earned his PhD from IIT, Madras in 1978 and has 40 years of professional
experience which includes teaching, research, and consultancy in India and abroad. Dr.
Subramanian has authored 25 books and more than 200 technical papers, published in international
and Indian journals and conferences. He has won the Tamil Nadu Scientist Award, the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Indian Concrete Institute (ICI) and the ACCE(I)-Nagadi best book
award for three of his books. He also served as the past vice-president of ICI and ACCE(I).
Fig.1 One of the twin 11-storey towers at Detailing 6 (10) 5 (14) 2 (1) 5 (17) 1 (11) -
Mugalivakkam near Porur, Chennai collapsed on Con- 22 (37) 12 (32) 52 (25) 6 (20) 2 (22) 11 (65)
28th June, 2014 killing 61 people struction
Maint- 1(2) - 22 (11) 1 (3) 4 (44) 1 (6)
enance
Such failures are common not only in structures
Material 1(2) - 3 (1) 2 (7) - -
built by private builders but also found in
External 16 (27) 11(30) 60 (29) 4 (13) - 1(6)
prestigious government projects. For example, a
Others - 4(11) 61 (29) - 1 (11) 3 (18)
footbridge that was built near the main stadium (NA)
for the Commonwealth Games collapsed in Sept. Total 60 37 207 30 9 (100) 17
2010, just 12 days before the opening ceremony, (100) (100) (100) (100) (100)
injuring 23 construction workers. When 50m aOne case unknown
section of the overhead Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro In order that these failures do not happen in
bridge, at Mumbai came crashing down in Sept. future, we need to learn from these failures. Even
2012, one person died and eight were injured. though some committees are constituted to study
This was a joint venture between Reliance the cause of some import failures in India, most
Infrastructure, Veolia Transport and the Mumbai often the committee reports are not made public.
Metropolitan Regional Development Authority Whereas, in Western countries such reports
(MMRDA). Similarly six persons, including an are made available to the public and hence
engineer, were killed and 13 others injured all concerned agencies can learn from these
Fig.6 Component and system-level seismic deficiencies found in pre-1980 concrete buildings (NIST GCR
10-917-7, 2010)