Structural Health Monitoring Performance During the 2010 Gigantic Chile Earthquake

Abstract

In February 27, 2010, the sixth largest magnitude earthquake recoded in the world affected the central part of Chile. More than 1,500 buildings higher than ten stories, bridges, and dams suffered strong shaking. Only three buildings and one bridge in all the stock were instrumented, a clear deficiency for such an active seismic area of the world. Review of the damage to the buildings’ stock took more than 1 month with a high social and political pressure to give assurance on the level of damage of each building. One of the instrumented buildings had a continuous remote monitoring system, and it gave in less than 10 min after the earthquake, an indication of the level of change in dynamic properties. For the other two buildings, the earthquake data was retrieved, and a detailed visual and analytical description of the observed damage and change of the modal properties was given in less than a week, due to an already existing algorithm of system identification and response parameter characterizations. These examples indicate the important potential of structural heal monitoring for rapid response and damage assessment of structures.