How earthquake-resistant are prefabricated buildings?

The main damage from earthquakes comes from collapsing, smashing or crushing buildings. For example, in the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in Hebei Province, 70%-80% of the buildings collapsed and the casualties were heavy.

Obviously, increasing the overall earthquake resistance of housing construction has become the key issue, especially in rural areas, the quality of construction needs to be improved.

In countries with a high incidence of earthquakes, such as Japan, the buildings are well planned for future earthquakes and the structures are designed for earthquakes. Light steel houses are most of the choices for self-built houses in Japan.

Japan's prefabricated buildings mainly adopt the assembled monolithic shear wall structure and the assembled monolithic frame structure. In terms of seismic measures, Japan adopts cast-in-place treatment for key frame beam and column joints and floor lamination layers, which not only increases the integrity of the structure, but also achieves the "equivalent type" with cast-in-place. At the same time, vibration isolation, shock absorption and energy dissipation devices are widely used in civil buildings including prefabricated frame structures.

The flexible frame composed of walls, beams and roof truss can meet the 9-degree seismic fortification requirements. When the earthquake comes, the flexible building begins to shake, and the energy generated will be absorbed by the shock absorber column to protect the key columns and beams from being destroyed, so as to ensure the stability of the main body of the house.

At present, the seismic performance of prefabricated building structures in China is basically equivalent to that of cast-in-place structures. In addition, the seismic performance of prefabricated buildings can be further improved by introducing seismic isolation measures.