Total illiteracy in construction—The tragic retribution for this will be very heavy and sorrowful: Seismic isolation strategies are the way to overcome such consequences

Abstract

Frequent earthquakes of medium and high intensities in different countries of the world constantly testify that engineers in most cases are illiterately solving the problem of the interaction of load-bearing and non-load-bearing structures in the buildings. As a result, the mass destruction of non-load-bearing walls and damage in load-bearing structures take place, and they are illustrated in the paper for various buildings in different countries. We must always remember the quote of Galileo Galilei: “Ignorance is the mother of malice, envy, greed and all other low and gross vices, as well as sins”. Therefore, this paper points to the total illiteracy and corruption that reign in the construction industry of Armenia in all cycles, starting from design, project expertise, issuing construction permits, and ending with construction and its technical and author’s supervision. It shows that the people employed in the construction complex have completely forgotten about the lessons of the devastating Spitak earthquake and completely ignored the high seismic danger in the territory of Armenia. Design organizations envisage old, unreliable methods for mass construction, where the dilemma of how to simultaneously minimize inter-story drifts and floor accelerations along the height of the buildings cannot be solved. This quite obviously leads to a significant increase in the cost of construction, which fully satisfies corrupt builders and corrupt state bodies. In the second part of the paper, the author states that one of the ways to overcome the current situation is the widespread application of the seismic isolation systems created by him and largely implemented in Armenia. In terms of the number of seismic isolated buildings per capita, the author brought Armenia to the second place in the world after Japan. The advantages and reliability of structures with seismic isolation systems both in the construction of new buildings and in the retrofitting of existing buildings are clearly illustrated. A comparative analysis of deformed states and values of accelerations along the height of buildings with and without seismic isolation systems is given. Paper also demonstrates the high economic efficiency obtained from the use of seismic isolation systems. It is shown that in the construction of new seismically isolated buildings, savings reach 40%, and the retrofitting of existing buildings by application of seismic isolation costs up to 5 times less, compared to traditional methods of strengthening. At the same time, the retrofitting of existing buildings by means of seismic isolation is carried out without interruption of their operation.