Citation

Kaltakci MY, Arslan MH, Korkmaz HH, Ozturk M. Eng. Failure Anal. 2007; 14(6): 962-969.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, European Structural Integrity Society, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

In Turkey, more than 90% of building stock consists of reinforced concrete buildings. The majority of Turkey's urban population lives in multi-story apartment blocks constructed with reinforced concrete. In addition to reinforced concrete structure damages caused from especially last decade's earthquakes, there were built structures most of which are unable to carry their own-weight and are not appropriate to engineering and design criteria because of lack of interest, ignorance, lack of inspection and supervision in Turkey. Up to now, even though there are many examples, Turkey has faced two painful experiences in Diyarbakir Hicret Apartment totally collapsed in 1983 and caused significant casualties (93 dead) and in Konya Zumrut Apartment in 2004 (92 dead). The casualties in these phenomenons were more than some big earthquakes. The most significant disadvantage of reinforced concrete buildings is that after producing RC members abolishing detailing defaults cannot be possible. Except for structural damages caused from last big earthquakes, the existence of some RC buildings damaged due to their own-weight and static loading rises a necessity of control and rehabilitation of RC buildings. In the study, first of all, there is mentioned about the causes of structural damages like not obeying the standard criteria, workmanship faults, over design loads (change in the utilization purpose of the building), insufficient material quality and false revisions applied on the construction by the users. The effect of not considering the significant and fundamental criteria existing especially in TEC-98 and TBC-500-2000 on system behavior is examined. Afterwards, giving examples for reinforced concrete structures failed in a 10-year period of time only under its dead load and caused serious life and possession losses, various analyses and experimental studies related with those structures is presented. The samplings will be classified according to the locations of the damages occurred in load-bearing system members. Finally, at the end of the study, damage formation causes and necessary precautions will be specified according to the results obtained from the analytical and experimental data.