Slashdot Mirror
Iron Alloy Could Create Earthquake-Proof Buildings
separsons writes "Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University designed a new shape memory metal alloy. The super elastic iron alloy can endure serious stretching and still return to its original shape. The scientists say that once optimized, the material could be used in everything from braces to medical stents to earthquake-proof buildings!"
Original article, after following three backlinks: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE62I4AE20100319
http://www.physorg.com/news3985.html
Even the beams being put into bridges are concrete because they are stronger and lighter than metal.
Chile is not Haiti. It is not even California. The building codes are law, and they are enforced. However, there is something to the natural selection thing, but not the way you mean.
Thousands of buildings went through the 8.8 earthquake with little more than a few cracked windows. It looks like total building collapse amounts to 1 building that litterally fell over on its side, and about 100 or so others that failed by design. The ones that failed on a wide scale where 200+ year old adobe houses (mostly one and two story structures). Those adobe structures did survive to some degree because they had never taken a full earthquake. The big ones had always been north or south of the 7th and 8th regions that got hit the hardest by this quake.
The death however was not really caused by the earthquake, but by the tsunami waves that came 3 hours apart. The navy screwed up by lifting the alert too soon, and people started returning to the beach.
My office building (15 floors), took an 8.0 about 200 miles from the epicenter. We lost a couple glass doors when the metal frame flexed, a few cracks, and one broken water pipe on a floor. It was built about 10 years ago.
No one even gets up and leaves the building anymore for anything under a 6.0 around here.
Living in Chile