a history of earthquake engineering

7/26/2019 A History of Earthquake Engineering

1/11

Proc IDNDR Inti Symp

on

Earthq Disaster Reduction Techno/

30thAnniv.

of

iSEE Tsukuba.Japan

1992)

pp.3-13.

A

History

of Earthquake

Engineering

D.

E. Hudson

Professor Emeritus

California Inst i tute of Technology

Pasadena, California

91125 USA

SUMMARY

This review

will

be

restricted

to

those aspects

of earthquake engineering

that

involve the application of quantitative scientif ic

principles

to the

determination

of

the response

of

real structures

to

strong

earthquake

ground

motion. We begin with early efforts to ascertain the

true

ground motion

associated

with destructive

earthquakes, and continue

with

the development

of structural dynamic theory to the point at which the

behavior

of complex

civil engineering structures

to

complicated

transient loads

can be calculated.

The

f i rs t

attempt

to

define a quantitative earthquake intensity scale

that assigns

numbers to specific

earthquake

effects on

people

and on struc-

tures was in the early

1800 s.

The f i rs t

effort

to relate such earthquake

intensit ies

to

a physical quantity, peak ground

acceleration, did

not

occur

until the

late 1880 s, some fifty years

before the direct

measurement of

strong

earthquake

ground motions. Practical seismographs f i rs t appeared in

the

1880 s,

but

these

were

sensitive

long

period devices

not

suitable

for

measuring destructive ground motion. t

was

not unti l the early 1930 s that

the

strong motion accelerograph was

developed,

and in 1933 the f i rs t accurate

measurement of

destructive earthquake

ground motion was

obtained during

the

Long Beach

California

earthquake.

By the middle

of

the 1800 s,

the

field of analytical mechanics had

progressed to the point that in

theory

the

response

of a structure of any

complexity

to

a prescribed earthquake

excitation

could be

solved.

In

the

1930 s

such

theory

was

applied

to the

earthquake problem and during

the

next

twenty

years

the rapid development

of

modern computing techniques made i t

possible

to carry out numerical

solutions

to

practical

problems. During

this

same

time,

methods

for

displaying

the

frequency

characteristics

of

earthquake

ground motions developed

into response

spectrum

theory,

which has remained

as an

important

tool in modern earthquake engineering. By

the

1960 s the

availability

of a large number

of

accelerograms from earthquakes of many

different types and sizes made i t possible to

portray

with reasonable

accuracy the

essential features of earthquake excitation as a basis for

earthquake resistant

design.

KEY WORDS

Earthquakes,

Seismology,

Earthquake Engineering, Ground Motion

Measurement Structural Dynamics

1. INTRODUCTION

Earthquake

engineering is

at

once a very

old

and a very new subject. A

3000-year history of earthquakes in China test i f ies to an ancient concern for

the subject, and there

is

evidence

that

conscious

attempts

to improve

the


2/11


3/11


4/11


5/11


6/11


7/11


8/11


9/11


10/11


11/11

a history of earthquake engineering

Documents