NHESS Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences NHESS Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 1684-9981 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/nhess-10-499-2010 Structural damages of L'Aquila (Italy) earthquake Kaplan H. 1 Bilgin H. 1 Yilmaz S. 2 Binici H. 1 Öztas A. 1 Epoka University, Engineering and Architecture Faculty, Department of Civil Engineering, Tirana, Albania Pamukkale, Engineering Faculty, Department of Civil Engineering, Denizli, Tukey 16 03 2010 10 3 499 507 Copyright: © 2010 H. Kaplan et al. 2010 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/10/499/2010/nhess-10-499-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/10/499/2010/nhess-10-499-2010.pdf

On 6 April 2009 an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 occurred in L'Aquila city, Italy. In the city center and surrounding villages many masonry and reinforced concrete (RC) buildings were heavily damaged or collapsed. After the earthquake, the inspection carried out in the region provided relevant results concerning the quality of the materials, method of construction and the performance of the structures. The region was initially inhabited in the 13th century and has many historic structures. The main structural materials are unreinforced masonry (URM) composed of rubble stone, brick, and hollow clay tile. Masonry units suffered the worst damage. Wood flooring systems and corrugated steel roofs are common in URM buildings. Moreover, unconfined gable walls, excessive wall thicknesses without connection with each other are among the most common deficiencies of poorly constructed masonry structures. These walls caused an increase in earthquake loads. The quality of the materials and the construction were not in accordance with the standards. On the other hand, several modern, non-ductile concrete frame buildings have collapsed. Poor concrete quality and poor reinforcement detailing caused damage in reinforced concrete structures. Furthermore, many structural deficiencies such as non-ductile detailing, strong beams-weak columns and were commonly observed. In this paper, reasons why the buildings were damaged in the 6 April 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy are given. Some suggestions are made to prevent such disasters in the future.

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