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Almondsetatlast Friday at 1:25 PM2 repliesview on HN

This is not a good analogy.

Crumple zones in cars exist under the assumption that they will not be occupied by humans. In a house, on the other hand, any place could have a person inside of it during an earthquake, meaning that basically the entire house would need to stand to avoid any human being hurt.


Replies

ZeroGravitaslast Friday at 1:38 PM

I'm not an architect and don't live in an earthquake zone, but I was under the impression that wooden homes flex in earthquakes and if and when they do fall on you, do less damage than concrete homes which are stiff up until a point and then crack and fall.

So the human surviving may come at the cost of more houses collapsing.

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wiredfoollast Friday at 2:20 PM

It absolutely happens in steel and concrete construction in earthquake loading, when loading past the smaller earthquakes.

Plastic/non-linear deformation is intended in shear panels of steel connections and the core of well confined concrete beams/columns. The idea is to provide a lot of energy damping due to the nonlinear nature of the f*D hysteresis curve. This works long enough for the earthquake to go away and the people to get out of the building, at which point, you need a new building but hopefully no one has died.