Malatya
Site Conditions
- Following the two major Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes of February 6, 2023, the existing building serving as the Malatya Governor’s Office was assessed as presenting a structural risk.
Designed Solution
- Demolition of the existing building and reconstruction in accordance with the provisions of the current Turkish Building Earthquake Code.
- Application of seismic isolation using geofoam blocks along the basement walls to reduce seismic loads acting on the structure.
Advantages of the Applied Geotechnology
- Under the Reduced Earth Pressure (REP) concept, seismic earth pressures are attenuated so that only negligible lateral loads are transferred to the basement walls.
- Under the Zero Earth Pressure (ZEP) concept, no lateral earth pressure is transferred to the basement walls under static conditions.
- As a result, the structural safety of the basement walls is enhanced under both static and seismic loading conditions.
Performance Under Service Loads
- An instrumentation program using total pressure cells was implemented.
