3 ms·

This is not a good analogy. Crumple zones in cars exist under the assumption that they will not be occupied by humans. In a house, on the other hand, any place

• ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  I'm not an architect and don't live in an earthquake zone, but I was under the impression that wooden homes flex in earthquakes and if and when they do fall on you, do less damage than concrete homes which are stiff up until a point and then crack and fall. So the human surviving may come at the cost of more houses collapsing.
  • onlypassingthru 2y ago
    Can personally confirm. Wooden houses do flex and often survive unscathed. The only major damage is usually due to any masonry attached to the house (see: chimney) or the house moving off of the foundation (see: before ties were in the building code).
• wiredfool 2y ago
  It absolutely happens in steel and concrete construction in earthquake loading, when loading past the smaller earthquakes. Plastic/non-linear deformation is intended in shear panels of steel connections and the core of well confined concrete beams/columns. The idea is to provide a lot of energy damping due to the nonlinear nature of the f*D hysteresis curve. This works long enough for the earthquake to go away and the people to get out of the building, at which point, you need a new building but hopefully no one has died.