First Soft Story Collapse

Columns and walls collapse 

Topple effect

Imperial College London Library

On the 22nd August I went to a university library to read their books on engineering in earthquakes. This was a daunting idea at first, but i managed to pluck up the courage to go and it turned out to be an extremely useful thing to do. I intend to go again, either to the same library or a different London university Library.

I took notes from three different books which i sourced:

• Introduction to Earthquake Engineering, second edition, Shunzo Okamoto, University of Tokyo Press,copyright 1984
• Design of Earthquake-resistant Buildings,Minoru Wakabayashi, McGraw-Hill Book Company USA, copyright 1986
• Urban Disaster Mitigation- the role of engineering and technology, Elsevier Science Ltd, copyright 1995

These books gave me background knowledge to my project, but now i need to research in depth the two cities i have decided to research for my essay, and then start writing my essay. 

Cambridge Summer School

At the beginning of August I attended a residential Mechanics summer school at Cambridge university in which I learnt new equations and concepts to do with dynamics; harmonic motion, circular motion, rotational dynamics.

This was indirectly relevant to my topic; the motion caused by earthquakes to buildings can often involve these calculations. I will not need to know this knowledge to write my essay, however when researching, I will be able to understand more of the mathematics behind what happened to the structures during the earthquakes as this will no doubt be recorded in studies and in the university books.