by Kishor S. Jaiswal, Ravi Sinha, Alok Goyal
The construction of reinforced concrete buildings with brick masonry infill walls has been a very common practice in urban India for the last 25 years. Most of this construction has been designed for gravity loads only, in violation of the Code of Indian Standards for earthquake-resistant design. These buildings performed very poorly during the Bhuj earthquake of January 2001 and several thousand buildings collapsed. The collapse was not limited to the epicentral region. The seismic vulnerability of this construction is clearly demonstrated by the collapse of about 75 RCC frame buildings and damage to several thousand others in and around Ahmedabad, which is over 250 km from the epicenter.