On the Probable Cause of the Failure of Kandla Port and Customs Office Tower during the 2001 Bhuj Earthquake

Abstract eng:
This paper presents a case study on the 22m high six-floor Port and Customs Office tower in Kandla port that tilted during the 2001 Bhuj earthquake (India). The tower building was founded on 32 cast-in-situ concrete piles. As the piles were closely spaced, the pile caps were connected together and were acting like a foundation mat. The geotechnical study of the soil at building site shows that the 12m sandy soil layer overlaid by 10m of clayey crust would have been liquefied during the earthquake. Based on the post-earthquake damage investigation of the building, it is calculated that the tip of the pile settled by about 0.45m. Conventional axial load transfer analysis and lateral spreading analysis, considering the degraded strength of soil during earthquake, could not predict the actual failure pattern of the building during earthquake. It has therefore been considered that the foundation mat would also have shared the load of the superstructure. A detailed analysis of the foundation, considering mat-pile-soil interaction, has been carried out whose results are able to describe the tilting of building up to certain extent. This study suggests that the piles passing through non-liquefiable laterally spreading crust and terminating in liquefiable deposit is not a good practice. However, the use of the foundation mats reduces the risk involved in the building from sudden collapse. Settlement of these foundations reduces the axial load acting on the pile as it shares a significant amount of load while the whole building tries to sink into the soil.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket