The results of a comprehensive investigation of hundreds of damaged bridges in earthquake-ravaged areas suggests around one-fifth of them suffered either partial or irreparable damage during the 921 earthquake, a figure that could have been drastically reduced if better construction techniques were employed, sources said.
Officials from the National Center for Research Earthquake Engineering (
After conducting field investigations on about 990 bridges in Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin and Nantou counties since the 921 earthquake, the research team led by NCREE -- and composed of more than 100 scientists from National Taiwan University (台灣?j學), National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (台灣科?THORN>?j學) and several engineering consultancy companies -- found that nearly 200 bridges had sustained damage.
PHOTO: AP
"At least 25 bridges have been classified as `extensively damaged' and nearly 70 percent of them were built prior to 1987, when older regulations governing earthquake-resistant construction was in force," Chang Kuo-chun (
"During the investigation, we found bridges that were not designed to withstand the intensity of Taiwan's earthquakes," he said.
Bridges within 10km of the Chelungpu fault (
Scientists said that since it is hard for engineers to avoid building bridges right over fault lines, which are scattered over across the country, and that a better way to prevent disasters would be to build stronger bridges meeting stricter regulations.
"Conclusions drawn from our several previous discussions with scientists and engineers suggest reclassifying the existing four earthquake-resistant construction categories into two stricter categories," Loh Chin-hsiung (
Loh said that all administrative areas in Taiwan were classified into one of four categories in 1997, based on the estimated effects of earthquakes of different intensi-ties.
If construction regulations were revised, the future highest earthquake-resistant coefficients would be higher than the existing threshold -- which is 0.33G horizontal ground acceleration corresponding to Category 1A. Category 1B, 2 and 3 define zones of lower maximum ground acceleration. According to data from NCREE, recorded peak horizontal ground acceleration in disaster areas during the 921 quake was much higher than 0.33G.
Loh said that areas near the Chelungpu fault certainly would be included in a new "Category 1," which would stand for the highest of the two new proposed categories.
Chang said that different bridge designs resulted in different kinds of damage, and therefore adopting innovative ways to build bridges should be considered in the future.
In the past, engineers tended to widen existing bridges without strengthening supporting piers first, and the method resulted in disasters during 921 quake.
"The reason for the collapse of bridges built by the highways bureau during the quake is because it adopted the simply supported beam system (
He said that the Japanese experts who joined the investigation had identified specific structural problems in several such bridges.
If engineers were to adopt a better system, the continuous-beam system (
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