Engineering Failure Analysis 68 (2016) 7686

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Engineering Failure Analysis

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

Learning from RC building structures damaged by the

earthquake in Lorca, Spain, in 2011
Joaqun G. Ruiz-Pinilla a, Jos M. Adam a,, Rodrigo Prez-Crcel b, Javier Yuste b, Juan J. Moragues a
a
b

ICITECH, Universitat Politcnica de Valncia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain
AIDICO, Technological Institute of Construction, Av. Benjamin Franklin 19, 46980 Paterna, Spain

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 15 February 2016
Received in revised form 18 April 2016
Accepted 5 May 2016
Available online 8 May 2016
Keywords:
Reinforced concrete
Building
Earthquake
Lorca
Damage

a b s t r a c t
In May 2011, the city of Lorca, in Spain, suffered an earthquake of magnitude Mw = 5.1. Even
though the intensity was not particularly high, as the epicentre was only a few kilometres
away from the city severe damage was caused to many buildings. The movements generated
by the earthquake, together with the special characteristics of the reinforced concrete (RC)
building structures in the region, gave rise to different types of structural damage, which are
analysed and classied in this paper. After carrying out inspections on buildings in the town
itself, a number of deciencies responsible for the damage caused were detected in RC elements, as well as behavioural alterations caused by non-load-bearing walls. Variations in the
local or general stiffness due to staircases, which are usually considered to be secondary elements, were another factor that played a role in the buildings' response. From the study we
learned a number of lessons about what happened in Lorca and these should be borne in
mind in the future when designing RC building structures in areas prone to earthquakes.
2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
On 11th May, 2011, one of the severest earthquakes suffered by Spain in recent years took place in the city of Lorca, killing
nine persons and injuring 324. The rst tremor, which took place at 15:05, reached a magnitude of Mw = 4.5 and did not
cause any serious damage, but did weaken the structure of some buildings. A little later, at 16:47, there was a replica of
Mw = 5.1 which was responsible for most of the damage caused. One of the main factors in the extent of the damage suffered
was the proximity of the hypocentres (2 km away at a depth of around 5 km) to the town.
Most of the buildings in the city had reinforced concrete (RC) structures, which, due to their design combined with the severity of the earth tremors, were at serious risk of collapse. In fact, many had to be subsequently demolished and others needed
retrotting.
The study of earthquake damage to buildings has become a useful tool for building professionals, researchers and students. An
ever growing number of books and papers are published each year on the subject [1,2], since earthquakes are still causing damage
to property and killing victims [3,4]. Some of the most dramatic of these events have occurred in the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan
and China in 2013, Indonesia and Iran in 2012, Japan and Turkey in 2011, Haiti and China in 2010 and Indonesia and Italy in 2009.
A number of authors have compiled information on earthquake damage to RC building structures, e.g. Murat [5], Baran et al.
[6] and Tapan et al. [7] described the effects of the earthquake in Van, Turkey, in 2011, while Mitchell et al. [8] studied the damage inicted by earth tremors in Hyogo-ken Nanbu, Japan, in 1995. Others, such as Arslan and Korkmaz [9], studied the damage

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: joadmar@upv.es (J.M. Adam).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2016.05.013
1350-6307/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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77

caused by various earthquakes in Turkey, and Augenti and Parisi [10] produced a similar study on the effects of an earthquake in
L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009.
The present paper analyses the different types of damage to RC building structures due to the Lorca earthquake, based on in
situ inspections carried out by the authors a few days after the disaster, combined with a research project on its consequences.
Some authors have published papers related to the effects of Lorca earthquake [1118]; however there is a lack of papers showing
the main lessons learned from this event. The main novelty of this paper is that consideration is given to the most important factors in the buildings' response and also to the precautions that should be taken to reduce the damage suffered in similar future
events.

2. General context of Lorca and the characteristics of the earthquake

2.1. Tectonic characteristics of the region
The city of Lorca is situated in the zone of interaction between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates. The continuous movements and complex collision processes between these plates throughout history gave rise to an accumulation of forces in the
Earth's crust that created the landscape of mountain ranges and valleys (Btica Range) in the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula.
At the present time these plates are moving towards one another at the rate of 45 mm per year [19], generating strong forces in
the many earth faults identied with tectonic activity. Due to their considerable size, these faults can accumulate and liberate
enormous quantities of energy and are thus potential generators of strong earth tremors. In the context of the Iberian Peninsula,
south-west Spain is dened as a zone of high seismic activity, although in the international context the activity is considered to be
moderate. Examples of this activity can be found in the moderate seismic series recorded in recent years in Mula (1999), Bullas
(2002) and La Paca (2005), with magnitudes of around 5.0 [19], that caused signicant damage to a large number of buildings.
Fig. 1 consists of a seismic map of the Iberian Peninsula, in which the higher seismic activity of the south-west, where Lorca is
situated, can be appreciated. The May 2011 earth tremor occurred along the Alhama de Murcia Fault, which is about 80 km long
in a SWNE direction and is considered to be highly dangerous, since its length and rate of movement are capable of producing

Fig. 1. Seismicity map of the Iberian Peninsula (Source: www.ign.es).

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strong earthquakes. The city of Lorca is quite close to this faultline, so that its population is highly exposed to the risk of seismic
events (see Fig. 2).

2.2. Characteristics of the May 2011 Lorca earthquake

The earthquake that occurred in Lorca in May 2011 registered a magnitude of Mw = 5.1 and was one of the most destructive
ever to happen in Spain [11], damaging a high percentage of the city's buildings [11,12] and causing nine deaths in a city with a
population of a little over 90,000. The main tremor was preceded by another of Mw = 4.5 that weakened the building structures.
Fig. 2 shows the positions of the epicentres of the May 2011 earthquakes and those of the subsequent replicas. Fig. 3 shows
the accelerograms recorded in Lorca's seismic station during the strongest of the tremors. It can be seen that the highest accelerations were recorded in the N-S component, reaching values of 0.37 g.
The high degree of uncertainty in estimating the basic acceleration of the city of Lorca should be borne in mind when assessing
this gure. One of the factors that can explain this uncertainty is the way in which the basic acceleration is estimated; this can be
obtained either from the activity in larger zones or directly from the observed seismic action. This results in a reduction of the
danger level and consequently of the associated basic acceleration in the proximity of the faults. This is exactly the case in
Lorca, which is built over the Alhama de Murcia fault. Another determining factor responsible for the greater than expected accelerations in this earthquake was the closeness of the hypocentre, which was approximately 2 km to the north-west of the
city at the relatively low depth of 5 km. Due to this, the recorded acceleration exceeded the gure predicted by all the models,
which are set for depths of 10 km and generally deduce the accelerations at greater distances by linear regression of actual data.

Fig. 2. Position of Lorca in relation to the Alhama Fault and the earthquakes that took place in May 2011.
(Source: www.ign.es).

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79

Fig. 3. Accelerograms registered at the Lorca Seismic Station. a) NS horizontal acceleration, b) EW horizontal acceleration, c) vertical acceleration.

3. Buildings with RC structures in Lorca

The oldest RC buildings in Lorca were put up in the nineteen-sixties, although the structural scheme is the same as in more
modern structures, with certain variations. The structural type is principally based on frames of RC beams and columns of not
more than six oors [13] in most cases. In the early buildings, band beams were commonly used combined with one-way
slabs. However, this method changed over time to the simpler method of using wide beams and one-way slabs or wafe slabs.
In these buildings the ground oor has a higher ceiling than the upper oors with large open areas often occupied by shops or
ofces. As in the rest of Spain, where seismic movements are rare or non-existent, the buildings in Lorca were basically designed
to resist no more than gravitational forces.
4. Damage observed in RC building structures
This section contains a classication of the damage to RC building structures in Lorca in the 2011 earthquake and includes photographs taken by the authors during their post-earthquake inspection of the typical failure modes described.

Fig 4. Damage to columns due to decient connement.

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4.1. Damage to columns

On the ground oors, most of the damage sustained by columns occurred at their top and bottom, and their lack of connement was found to be one of the major problems (see Fig. 4). Fig. 4a shows the failure of a column with very few stirrups at its
end. It can also be seen that on one side of this column there is neither longitudinal reinforcement nor stirrups, leaving it underconned. Closing the stirrups is also an important factor, since if they are not anchored correctly [20] they may open under high
loads or on losing their concrete cover (Fig. 4b). Another case in which decient connement in columns may occur is when the
stirrup diameter is too narrow or if reinforcement has been lost through corrosion, resulting in failure (Fig. 4c). Similar cases of
damage due to inadequate connement, stirrup failure and insufcient overlap were described by Baran et al. [6].
In many cases the lack of sufcient reinforcement in columns gave rise to failure through shear stresses (Fig. 5). This type of
failure is best avoided due to its brittle behaviour. References are made to similar cases in the earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009
[10].
The normal practice in Lorca of building ground oors with high ceilings has already been mentioned. This means that the
ground oors are less stiff than the upper oors and in an earthquake suffer more deformation, with a tendency to the early formation of plastic hinges at the top and bottom of columns. When there is insufcient connement at these points their resistance
is reduced and early failure occurs. This is what happened in the case of the building shown in Fig. 6, in which practically all the
columns on the ground oor were damaged at the top and bottom.
Other failures were attributed to some columns being too short. When semi-basements are included, the columns are shorter
due to the need to include ventilation windows. When they receive lateral forces during an earthquake, these columns' high stiffness means that higher than normal loads are created and may result in double diagonal cracking failure. Fig. 7 shows various
cases of this type of failure mechanism. Fig. 7a shows the only building in Lorca that collapsed completely, which was constructed
in the same way as its neighbour (Fig. 7b), which did not collapse.
In spite of not being considered as structural elements, the existence of hollows in faade walls (Fig. 8a) or inll walls that do
not cover the entire column length (Fig. 8b) may give rise to short columns and the restricted movement they involve (known as
inlling).
All the failures described related to lack of connement of columns, insufcient overlap of reinforcement, the strong beam/
weak column problem, inlling and soft-storey are usually found in high magnitude earthquakes such as some that happened
in Turkey [9].

4.2. Damage to beam-column joints

Beam-column joint failure is one of the most critical in RC framed structures, as the damage caused involves a grave risk of the
collapse of the building. To have good behaviour under seismic loads, the joints must be designed with special qualities of ductility, which involves them being properly conned by stirrups. Another important detail is the anchorage of the beam reinforcement in the interior of the joint, especially important in outer joints, in which the beam reinforcement has to transfer all its load
to the joint in a very short length. After the Lorca earthquake these conditions were found to be absent, as also happened, but to a
lesser extent, in Van (Turkey) in 2011 [7]. Fig. 9a and b show the damage in two joints due to lack of connement. Fig. 9c shows
the damage to another joint due to the lack of anchorage of the beam reinforcement in the interior of the joint.

Fig 5. Damage to columns by shear forces.

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Fig 6. Damage to a building with a soft storey.

4.3. Damage to other elements caused by deformation of the structure

The lateral displacement of buildings during seismic movements can involve them coming into contact with each other, causing damage to inll walls and even to the structure itself, should the impact be between slabs and columns (Fig. 10). This phenomenon actually occurred to some of the buildings in Lorca, but was something that could have been expected in RC framed
structures not designed to have limited deformation against earthquakes. In Fig. 10 can be seen the magnitude of the displacement of the oors of a building under construction, which would have been less had it been nished, due to the stiffness contributed by inll masonry walls.
Most of the deaths in the Lorca earthquake were caused by falling inll masonry walls [15], which, even though they do not
have a structural function should be able to move with the structure. Cyclical movements of the structure can cause diagonal
cracking in masonry inll walls and even damage wall/structure connections, and if severe enough cause the inll walls to collapse. Some examples of this are shown in Fig. 11a and b.
Non-uniform structural stiffness was another cause of falling masonry inll walls. This can be seen in Fig. 11c, in which the
combination of both RC and steel columns created torsional forces that rotated the structure around its vertical axis and made

Fig 7. Damage to short columns. a) Collapsed building, b) Failure of a short column.

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Fig 8. Damage due to the constraint of inll walls on columns.

the inll walls collapse. The same thing happened to some of the inll walls around staircases, which fell onto the stairs themselves and hindered the escape of the residents (Fig. 11d).
5. Reections on the events in Lorca
The Lorca disaster in 2011 made clear the region's potential vulnerability to earth movements as regards both its geographical
situation and its building practices. The analysis carried out should be used as the basis for future action plans to improve the security of buildings and the people who live in them.
5.1. Severity of the earthquake
Fortunately, the strong tremors did not last longer than 34 s, as can be seen in Fig. 3. The disaster would have been even
greater had these tremors lasted longer, as in the Izmit (Turkey) earthquake in 1999 [21], in which ground acceleration values
similar to those recorded in Lorca were experienced for a longer period.
The duration of the cycles is vitally important for RC structures, since resistance, stiffness and reinforcement/concrete adherence degenerate rapidly, especially under high loads. These phenomena have been studied by various authors from different
points of view. When an RC element is subjected to consecutive load/unload cycles its resistance is reduced [22] and if the cycles
change direction the degradation is even faster [23]. Reinforcement adherence is also affected by the number and intensity of the
cycles [24], and even more so are elements with low ductility, such as beam-column joints not designed to withstand earthquakes
[25], in which this adherence plays a fundamental role [26].
In its favour, Lorca's buildings had the advantage of not experiencing resonance phenomena, which are not usually found in
earthquakes of short duration, so that in spite of the peak value of the ground acceleration values recorded further damage
was avoided.

Fig 9. Damage in beam-column joints.

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Fig 10. Damage due to pounding between adjacent buildings.

On the other hand, the city's proximity to the epicentre of the earthquake was an important factor in the damage it sustained.
The Spanish building code NCSE-02 [27] includes an earthquake danger map that gives the basic acceleration as the horizontal
surface acceleration value of the terrain. In the case of Lorca, this is 0.12 g for compact rock at an average depth of 10 km,
with a 10% probability of being exceeded in 50 years. However, as the quake occurred very close to the city, its effect was drastically increased. A similar case occurred in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009 [10].
For all the above reasons, it is difcult to draw conclusions on the severity of an earthquake based solely on the response spectra, which only compare the design acceleration of structures in different vibration periods with the peak accelerations obtained from the recorded accelerogram without considering the number of cycles experienced at a certain magnitude.

5.2. Analysis of the damage sustained

The columns in the most severely damaged buildings in Lorca were the short columns, or those constrained by inll walls on
the ground oor. Those on soft-storeys also suffered damage, but with less drastic structural consequences. The remainder, including those on upper oors performed reasonably well, apart from some isolated cases. Most of the damage to columns occurred at
the top and bottom, owing to the decient connement caused by one or other of the following factors: overwide separation between stirrups, too small rebar diameters, short anchorages, or rebar corrosion.
The damage to slabs, beams and joints only become visible when the building collapses or there is extreme deformation, but
not in cases of minor damage in which the cracks later closes or almost disappears. This damage only remains clearly visible on
elements on the outer frames, as mentioned in Section 4.2, as occurred in Kocaeli, Turkey, in 1999 [28] and in Thailand and
Indonesia in 2004 [29]. It is quite possible that there was damage that remained hidden, and also that the response of the
slabs, beams and joints to bending, shear and punching loads benetted from the connement effect of the slab as a rigid diaphragm, which generated a compression on the plane that improved this response [30].
Beam-column joints are some of the most important elements in the behaviour of RC structures [31,32], especially in those
subjected to seismic loads. The peculiarity of beam-column joints lies in the fact that in an earthquake they must efciently transmit cyclic loads through the joints between beams and columns and resist degrading to the point where the building collapses.
Due to the small size of the joints and the large forces generated within them [33,34], they must be tted with stirrups strong
enough to resist the shear and compression loads produced by the diagonal strut mechanism. Not putting stirrups in beamcolumn joints is a common error, under the assumption that they are already innitely stiff and do not need additional connement. The vulnerability of these joints and their retrotting was recently studied by Ruiz-Pinilla et al. [35].
Staircases are usually regarded as secondary structural elements and are calculated apart from the main structure but are
joined to it by means of the adjacent slabs and columns. This means that the structure may have an inappropriate response,
that its stiffness can vary, and new short columns may be generated. Such cases were studied by Li and Mosalam [36] in the

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Fig 11. Collapsed inll walls.

damage after an earthquake in Wenchuan, China, in 2008. Apart from the structural damage that staircases can cause, it is important to note that inll walls can also fall on top of them and prevent victims from escaping from a collapsing building.
It is also worth mentioning that in spite of the damage sustained by the buildings in Lorca, only one of them actually collapsed
and that most of the victims died as a result of falling masonry inll walls. It is therefore important to verify that the deformation
between the structure and inll walls is compatible, either by ensuring that the walls can follow the movements of the structure,
or that the deformation of the structure will not damage the walls.
Another effect of structural movements may be the contact between buildings (hammering effect), which can cause them to
collapse, as variously described by Murat [5] and Arslan and Korkmaz [9].
On occasions, damage is caused by architectural designs that have not considered the continuity between structural elements
or the distribution of their stiffness. It is a common practice to build structures in which a oor's centre of stiffness does not coincide with its centre of mass, which produces torsional loads under the effects of earth movements, as occurred in some cases in
Lorca. Ozmen and Unay [37] identied a number of such cases that caused damage to various buildings.
5.3. Lessons learned that should be taken into consideration in the future
Regardless of the accuracy of the earthquake magnitudes specied by building standards to be considered when designing
buildings, much of the damage sustained in Lorca in 2011 could have been avoided by using appropriate structural concepts.
The main lessons learned from this event are as follows:
1) Avoid short columns and cases likely to cause inlling in columns. Should these elements be necessary, they should be allowed
for in the structural calculations by appropriately dening the constructional details.
2) Special attention should be given to the columns on ground oors, especially at their top and bottom. They should be given
increased longitudinal and transverse reinforcement to improve their connement and ductility.
3) Avoid connecting staircases with columns in ways that could generate short columns.
4) Fit the necessary stirrups to beam-column joints and ensure adequate anchorage or overlap to the beam rebars in the joint.

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5) Be cautious with concrete covering in outer columns, beams and joints, as they are in the most exposed structural zones where
the reinforcement could be prone to corrosion.
6) Be consistent with the displacements estimated by the calculations and those permitted by inll walls, staircases and joints
between buildings.
7) Avoid discontinuous architectural designs or those that could cause torsional movements between oors.
6. Conclusions
In May 2011 Lorca suffered two consecutive earthquakes in a very short interval of time. The rst quake had the lowest intensity but weakened some structures that sustained serious damage in the second. The main threat to the city came from the fact
that the hypocentres were only a short distance away and close to the earth's surface, so that even though the magnitude of the
movements was not particularly high, due to the proximity of the hypocentre the city received the full force of the energy liberated by the quakes. However, the tremors were of short duration; the strongest cycles did not last more than 34 s, which
avoided further serious damage being caused.
Almost all the damage sustained by RC building structures was seen to take place in the columns, in spite of the aims of the
codes designed to prevent earthquake damage, as the failure of these elements can induce structural collapse. Although it is preferred that plastic deformation occurs in the beams so that the energy is dissipated without risk to the building's structural integrity, most of the Lorca buildings did not behave in this way. This could have been due to their not having sufcient ductility to
deal with the expected deformation, either due to the constraint of the inll masonry walls, changes in the stiffness due to staircases, or the proximity of neighbouring buildings that restricted their deformation.
The study was thus able to detect the most vulnerable points in RC building structures designed in accordance with the building practices in use in Lorca. These should be taken into account in future building projects and could also be used to identify
structures susceptible to serious damage due to seismic events.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.
2016.05.013. These data include the Google map of the most important areas described in this article.
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