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Soft Story Building
A soft story building is a multi-story building in which one or more floors have windows, wide doors, large unobstructed commercial spaces, or other openings in places where a shear wall would normally be required for stability as a matter of earthquake engineering design. A typical soft story building is an apartment building of three or more stories located over a ground level with large openings, such as a parking garage or series of retail businesses with large windows. Buildings are classified as having a soft story if that level is less than 70% as stiff as the floor immediately above it, or less than 80% as stiff as the average stiffness of the three floors above it. Soft story buildings are vulnerable to collapse in a moderate to severe earthquake in a phenomenon known as soft story collapse. The inadequately-braced level is relatively less resistant than surrounding floors to lateral earthquake motion, so a disproportionate amount of the building's overall side-to-side d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shear Wall
In structural engineering, a shear wall is a vertical element of a system that is designed to resist in- plane lateral forces, typically wind and seismic loads. In many jurisdictions, the International Building Code and International Residential Code govern the design of shear walls. A shear wall resists loads parallel to the plane of the wall. Collectors, also known as drag members, transfer the diaphragm shear to shear walls and other vertical elements of the seismic force resisting system. Shear walls are typically light-framed or braced wooden walls with shear panels, reinforced concrete walls, reinforced masonry walls, or steel plates. Plywood is the conventional material used in wood (timber) shear walls, but with advances in technology and modern building methods, other prefabricated options have made it possible to inject shear assemblies into narrow walls that fall at either side of an opening. Sheet steel and steel-backed shear panels in the place of structural plywood i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earthquake Engineering
Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake (or seismic) engineer aims to construct structures that will not be damaged in minor shaking and will avoid serious damage or collapse in a major earthquake. Earthquake engineering is the scientific field concerned with protecting society, the natural environment, and the man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to socio-economically acceptable levels. Traditionally, it has been narrowly defined as the study of the behavior of structures and geo-structures subject to seismic loading; it is considered as a subset of structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, applied physics, etc. However, the tremendous costs experienced in recent earthquakes have led t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apartment Building
An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are many names for these overall buildings, see below. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium ( strata title or commonhold), to tenants renting from a private landlord (see leasehold estate). Terminology The term ''apartment'' is favored in North America (although in some cities ''flat'' is used for a unit which is part of a house containing two or three units, typically one to a floor). In the UK, the term ''apartment'' is more usual in professional real estate and architectural circles where otherwise the term ''flat'' is used commonly, but not exclusively, for an apartment on a single level (hence a 'flat' apartment). In some coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parking Garage
A multistorey car park ( British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a building designed for car, motorcycle & bicycle parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place. It is essentially an indoor, stacked car park. The first known multistory facility was built in London in 1901, and the first underground parking was built in Barcelona in 1904. (See History, below.) The term multistory is almost never used in the US, since parking structures are almost all multiple levels. Parking structures may be heated if they are enclosed. Design of parking structures can add considerable cost for planning new developments, and can be mandated by cities in new building parking requirements. Some cities such as London have abolished previously enacted minimum parking requirements. Minimum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time period. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume. The word ''tremor'' is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loma Prieta Earthquake
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (''Violent''), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (to the degree that it was designated a seismic gap) until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989. Damage was heavy in Santa Cruz County and less so to the south in Monterey County, but effects extended well to the north into the San Francisco Bay Area, both on the San Francisco Peninsula and across the bay in Oakland. No surface fau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as Santa Cruz and San Benito (more often included in the Central Coast regions); or San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus (more often included in the Central Valley). The core cities of the Bay Area are San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Home to approximately 7.76 million people, Northern California's nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seismic Retrofit
Seismic retrofitting is the modification of existing structures to make them more resistant to seismic activity, ground motion, or soil failure due to earthquakes. With better understanding of seismic demand on structures and with our recent experiences with large earthquakes near urban centers, the need of seismic retrofitting is well acknowledged. Prior to the introduction of modern seismic codes in the late 1960s for developed countries (US, Japan etc.) and late 1970s for many other parts of the world (Turkey, China etc.), many structures were designed without adequate detailing and reinforcement for seismic protection. In view of the imminent problem, various research work has been carried out. State-of-the-art technical guidelines for seismic assessment, retrofit and rehabilitation have been published around the world – such as the ASCE-SEI 41 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soft Story Retrofit LA
Soft may refer to: * Softness, or hardness, a property of physical materials Arts and entertainment * ''Soft!'', a 1988 novel by Rupert Thomson * Soft (band), an American music group * ''Soft'' (album), by Dan Bodan, 2014 * Softs (album), by Soft Machine, 1976 * "Soft", a song by Kings of Leon on the 2004 album ''Aha Shake Heartbreak'' * "Soft"/"Rock", a 2001 single by Lemon Jelly Other uses * Sorgenti di Firenze Trekking (SOFT), a system of walking trails in Italy * Soft matter, a subfield of condensed matter * Magnetically soft, material with low coercivity * Soft skills, a person's people, social, and other skills * Soft commodities, or softs *A flaccid penis Tumescence is the quality or state of being tumescent or swollen. Tumescence usually refers to the normal engorgement with blood (vascular congestion) of the erectile tissues, marking sexual excitation, and possible readiness for sexual activity. ..., the opposite of "hard" See also * * * Softener (disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Building Code
A building code (also building control or building regulations) is a set of rules that specify the standards for constructed objects such as buildings and non-building structures. Buildings must conform to the code to obtain planning permission, usually from a local council. The main purpose of building codes is to protect public health, safety and general welfare as they relate to the construction and occupancy of buildings and structures. The building code becomes law of a particular jurisdiction when formally enacted by the appropriate governmental or private authority. Building codes are generally intended to be applied by architects, engineers, interior designers, constructors and regulators but are also used for various purposes by safety inspectors, environmental scientists, real estate developers, subcontractors, manufacturers of building products and materials, insurance companies, facility managers, tenants, and others. Codes regulate the design and constru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
