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The Silakhor (Iran) Earthquake of 31 March 2006, from an Engineering and Seismological Point of View

Mohammadreza Hosseinnejad
Iran University of Sciences and Technology

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	INTRODUCTION

 
The Silakhor (Lorestan, Iran) earthquake (M_s = 6.1) occurred on 31 March 2006, at 01:17:01 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), shaking the Silakhor district in west Iran. In the macroseimal area, about 50% of buildings totally collapsed, and the others were severely damaged. The event occurred on the Dorud fault, a reverse high-angle fault with a strike-slip component, but it did not have a surface rupture. The macro-seismic analyses and analysis of the recorded accelerogram in Chalanchulan (0.52 g vertical and 0.43 g horizontal with T_S – T_P value of about 1.2 seconds) show that the epicenter is very close to Chalanchulan town. Although many of the masonry buildings totally collapsed in the epicentral area, engineered structures constructed according to the seismic code of Iran showed very good structural behavior without any significant damage. Finally, the earthquake intensity is determined as VIII on the MSK scale at the epicenter and strongly decreases with distance from the fault.

Silakhor, a flat agricultural plain centered by the small town of Chalanchulan, is located in Lorestan Province, west Iran (Figure 1). Silakhor is a populated area with several dozen villages close to each other; most of Silakhor's population are farmers. Some of the villages are located exactly over the Dorud fault zone. The plain is bordered by the Zagross mountains in the west and southwest, Dorud city in the southeast, Borujerd city in the northwest, and another mountain range to the west. Houses in the Silakhor area at the time of the earthquake were usually one-story masonry buildings, some of them old and very weak. All buildings of this type totally collapsed during the earthquake, which was not very strong. Even quite a distance away in Borujerd some masonry buildings were severely damaged, and a few collapsed. Those buildings built according . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Amirkabir University of Technology
Tehran, Iran
ramazi@aut.ac.ir
(H.R.)