Kumar, Ashutosh and Hughes, Paul N. and Sarhosis, Vasilis and Toll, David and Wilkinson, Sean and Coningham, Robin and Acharya, Kosh Prasad and Weise, Kai and Joshi, Annie and Davis, Christopher and Kunwar, Ram Bahadur and Maskey, Prem Nath (2020) 'Experimental, numerical and field study investigating a heritage structure collapse after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake.', Natural hazards., 101 (1). pp. 231-253.
Abstract
This paper presents an investigation of the collapse of a 325-year-old multi-tiered heritage temple during the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal. The research comprises a reconnaissance survey followed by a geotechnical investigation and numerical back-analysis carried out to understand the potential causes of the collapse. The assessment of the structural configuration of the temple indicated seismic vulnerability in the design due to the presence of discontinuous columns over the height of the temple and age-weakened bonding in the masonry walls. The geotechnical investigation revealed the presence of competent soil strata at the location, assisting the survey which indicated no differential or excessive settlement in the foundation. A series of cyclic triaxial tests were conducted on samples recovered during the geotechnical investigation to determine dynamic behaviour of the soil. Further, dynamic analysis of the plinth of the temple under the recorded acceleration–time history indicated a maximum drift percentage of 1.4% and residual relative displacement of 32 mm suggesting the potential reason behind the collapse. The output of this research will support seismic rehabilitation of ancient structures within World Heritage sites across Nepal and effective action plans to safeguard them against future earthquake hazard.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (3788Kb) |
| Status: | Peer-reviewed |
| Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-03871-7 |
| Publisher statement: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date accepted: | 01 February 2020 |
| Date deposited: | 26 February 2020 |
| Date of first online publication: | 12 February 2020 |
| Date first made open access: | 26 February 2020 |
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