Lessons Learnt from Building Damages in the Wenchuan Earthquake

The earthquake Ms=8.0 at Wenchuan county of Sichuan Province in China happened on May 12, 2008. In the strong seismic area, engineering structures were badly damaged in various grades or collapsed. This paper focuses on the description and analysis of the damage phenomena of engineering geology, buildings and lifeline engineering structures based on the on-site investigation of the earthquake damage. Finally, some valuable lessons learned from this big earthquake are presented including the suitable building structures should be chosen for important buildings to resist the seismic action in the strong earthquake area when the building is designed; the concept design and applications of energy-absorbed and vibration-reduced techniques should be paid attention; the comprehensive safe evaluations for the existing buildings should be done in the strong seismic active area; the seismic designs and researches on bridges and pavement should be emphasized, and the seismic design and research on facilities of communication, and power and water supplies should be regarded as key issues to make the facilities expedite for disaster rescue after earthquake. The content in this paper may be as a reference to seismic design of buildings, reconstruction of disaster area and revision of corresponding codes and regulations.