Recorded responses of Four Tall buildings in South China to the M 7.9 Myanmar Earthquake on March 28, 2025

Abstract

This paper reports the recorded structural responses of four 170 m-320 m tall buildings in China to the mainshock of the M 7.9 Myanmar earthquake on March 28, 2025. The buildings are located approximately 1 200 km-2 000 ​km away from the epicenter. The following observations are made by preliminary analysis of the data: (1) the base motion of the buildings exhibited significant long-period components in the range of 2 s-10 s; (2) the identified fundamental periods were much larger than the empirical equations in the design codes, suggesting that the empirical equations may be overly conservative; (3) the amplification of floor accelerations was much more significant than code provisions for determining the seismic demands on non-structural elements, possibly attributing to the overly high damping ratios assumed in the design codes; (4) the buildings exhibited large enough equivalent lateral stiffnesses to satisfy the drift limit under frequent earthquakes by the Chinese seismic provisions, and (5) the significant durations of the shaking of the upper floors of the buildings were comparable to those of the base motions.

Keywords

Myanmar earthquake / High-rise buildings / Long-period ground motion / Far-field earthquakes / Seismic structural monitoring

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tao Fan: Writing-original draft, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Zhe Qu: Writing-original draft, Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Jiang Yang: Resources. Juan Qin: Project administration, Formal analysis. Xiaofeng Xu: Project administration. Yuxiu Chen: Software, Project administration. Qiong Yuan: Project administration.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. There are no financial or personal relationships with individuals or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias the content of the manuscript entitled “Recorded Responses of Four Tall Buildings in South China to the M 7.9 Myanmar Earthquake on March 28, 2025”. No competing interests, whether professional or personal, exist regarding any products, services, or companies that might affect the objectivity of the presented research findings or their interpretation. The study was conducted independently without any external influence that could compromise its scientific integrity. The corresponding author Zhe Qu is the deputy editor-in-chief of Earthquake Research Advances and was not involved in the peer review or decision to publish this article.The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Jiang Yang and Qiong Yuan are currently employed by Wuhan institute of seismology instrument Co.,LTD.

Author agreement and acknowledgment

All authors agree to this publication. The authors are grateful to the Strong Motion Observation Center of the Institute of Engineering Mechanics, China Earthquake Administration, and the Earthquake Agencies of Chongqing, Hubei, and Hainan for promptly sharing the monitoring data following the earthquake. This work is jointly sponsored by the Key Science and Technology Project of the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China (2024EMST040403), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFC3012802) and the Scientific Research Fund from Institute of Seismology, CEA and National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management of China (IS202216317). The financial supports are greatly appreciated.

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