Inexpensive technology for saving structures and life in earthquake prone areas

About two third land mass of India is prone to moderate to high seismic risk. The population doubled in last half century and it is about ten times in urban areas. To accommodate this population the structures are built accordingly. It is well known that the structures kill the life and not the earthquake directly. Failure of structures may be taking place due to a. Increase in seismic demand, b. Gaps in design of structures, c. Reduction of structural capacity with time. For example, the Dharahara tower alone taken 200-300 lives in last month Nepal earthquake. This failure may be due to increase in seismic demand. Some new concrete structures failed may be due to gaps in design (e.g. soft storey). Some old wooden structures failed due to loss in capacity due to age effects. Compared to Dharahara tower, the occupancy in most of the urban buildings may be many folds and any failure of such buildings under design basis seismic event will result into enormous loss of life and economy. Coming to the towns and villages, the design concept adopted is mainly based on thumb rules and not technical basis. Risk in terms of life and economy in such buildings is also very large.

Today technology is available to rehabilitate and retrofit old structures and have better designs in new structures. The colloquium will focus on the comparison of failures of structures in Kobe, Bhuj and Nepal earthquakes. Also will present details of in expensive technology available to save structures and life in earthquake prone areas.



About Professor G. R. Reddy:


Professor G. R. Reddy, B.E, M.Tech, PhD(TMU,Japan), Outstanding Scientist, is heading Structural and Seismic Engineering section of Reactor Safety Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and also serving as Professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute. In addition, he is a recognized guide for PhDs in Mumbai University and Christ University, Bangalore. He is holding honorary post of president of Association of Structural Rehabilitation (ASTR). He is a life member of Indian Nuclear Society.
Since 1984 he is working in the area of Structural Dynamics & Earthquake Engineering and analyzed, designed nuclear facility structures, equipment and piping systems. Made significant contribution in design of 500 MWe PHWRs and involved in the design of AHWR and structures for solar thermal power plants. Made contribution in the design of 30 M DSN antenna for Chandrayan project and recently completed the design of large size gamma ray telescope. Worked in the research areas like modeling techniques of complex structures, structure-equipment interaction due to earthquakes, stochastic methods of analysis, dynamic substructure techniques. Mastered seismic response control methods and involved in developing friction dampers, elasto-plastic dampers, Lead extrusion dampers, isolators and Tuned liquid dampers. Developed simple seismic design procedures for equipment and piping supported on hysteretic supports. As a part of developing more realistic design procedures, performed large number of experiments on concrete beam-column joints, frames and piping systems till collapse. Simple method to evaluate the performance levels of structures and piping systems is developed. For the purpose of life extension of the existing facilities, evolved methods for performing seismic retrofitting of structures using dampers, FRP, steel jacketing. In addition to research in the area of earthquake engineering and structural dynamics, presently involved in research areas of structures subjected to fire and impact loads. He has guided several students for M.Tech and PhD. He has more than 400 publications to his credit.