Bhutan is situated in the young Himalayan range which is considered as one of the world’s most active seismic zones. Thus Bhutan is prone to earthquakes and building earthquake-resilient structure is therefore crucial. To test the resilience of traditional Bhutanese structures to earthquakes, the Department of Culture and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) conducted shake table test exercise yesterday.
A traditional composite masonry building is put to test by placing on top of a shaking table. The shaking table system can simulate real earthquakes. The test records crucial data that would help in improving the seismic resilience of traditional houses in Bhutan.
“From this test, we can understand the failure mechanism or the response of our traditional building if an earthquake strikes. Till date, we do not have any scientific data regarding our traditional buildings’ resilience to earthquakes. From this test we can have scientific data to refer and guide our Bhutanese people to build earthquake resilient traditional houses,” said Kunzang Tenzin, an engineer with the Department of Culture.
The shake table test is to help Bhutan come up with measures to build quality traditional buildings in the future that can withstand severe earthquakes.
“Today’s test shows that there a lot of work we should do to make our traditional buildings very strong and seismic resilient. We came to know the flaws of our traditional structures and where we need to work on make it very strong.”
The shake table test on composite traditional masonry building in Bhutan is a part of a five-year project titled Project for evaluation and mitigation of Seismic Risk for composite Masonry Buildings in Bhutan. The project is implemented by the Department of Culture and other relevant government agencies in collaboration with JICA.
Choni Dema
