ABSTRACT

The occurrence of earthquakes, their consequent impact on people and on the facilities they live and work in, the evaluation and interpretation of damage caused by severe ground motions, are the principal items for structural engineers designing buildings in seismic areas. The attempts to find the answer to the question: “why does damage occur, after a wide amount of research work?”, is an ethical duty of the specialists. The paradox of structural engineering is that while engineers can learn from the structural mistakes of what not to do, they do not necessarily learn from successes how to do (Petroski, 1985). The failure of a structure contributes more to the evolution of design concepts than structures standing without accidents, on the condition that the engineers have the capability to understand what happened. So, the damage of a structure during an earthquake represents a challenge for structural engineers to improve the design methods.