Earthquake in Türkiye - A Hard Lesson for Structural Engineers
By the time I finished writing this post, over 43,000 has been found dead in the devastating event that struck Türkiye and Syria, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. In Türkiye alone, over 5600 buildings collapsed. What Happened? On 6 Feb 2023, a series of earthquake occurred in southeast of Türkiye. The recorded epicenter is close to Gaziantep, with its hipocenter at 10miles (16km) from the surface. The first earthquake with magnitude 7.8 happened at 4:17am local time. A series of aftershocks with magnitude 6.5 followed until another large earthquake with magnitude 7.5 occurred at around lunchtime. The area is known to be seismically active, as it is located at the intersection of three tectonic plates Reading the brief explanation from Dr. Subramanian Narayanan, during the earthquake, the peak ground acceleration (PGA) of the first mainshock reached to around 0.7g, with the spectral acceleration exceeded 2g around 0.5-0.6 seconds (See Figure). To put it into perspecti...
