Structuresblog

You’ve all seen the pictures (linked at the bottom of the post) of the spectacular building collapse in Shanghai. At around 5:30am on June 27, an unoccupied building still under construction at Lianhuanan Road in the Minhang district of Shanghai city toppled over. One worker was killed.

These figures show why the building collapsed.  The images are from a Chinese newspaper and from the bbs.sina.com.cn website.  The translations were forwarded to me in an email (Unfortunately, I can’t read Mandarin).

(1) An underground garage was being dug on the south side, to a depth of 4.6 meters
(2) The excavated dirt was being piled up on the north side, to a height of 10 meters
(3) The building experienced uneven lateral pressure from south and north
(4) This resulted in a lateral pressure of 3,000 tones, which was greater than why the pilings could tolerate.  Thus the building toppled over in the southerly direction. Read more…