ABSTRACT

Two earthquakes occurred in Kumamoto Prefecture in April, 2016. The first earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.1–6.2 occurred at 21:26 of JST on April, 2016. The second earthquake with a moment magnitude of 7.0 occurred at 1:26 on April 16, 2016. While the first earthquake induced very high ground accelerations in Mashiki town, its effect was quite limited. However, the second earthquake with a higher magnitude caused heavy damage to wide spread damage due to high ground motions and permanent ground straining. In this paper, the authors describe the damage induced on rock engineering structures such as tunnels, foundations of bridges, slopes, pylons and dams and describe their characteristics together with some information of their seismological characteristics. The authors also discuss their implementations on the seismic design of rock engineering structures.