Main Transportation System Earthquake Damages due to Slope Failure and near Fault Effection in 8.0 Wenchuan Earthquake

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Main Transportation System Earthquake Damages due to Slope Failure and near Fault Effection in 8.0 Wenchuan Earthquake

Tang, Ai-Ping / Wang, Lian-Fa / Wen, Ai-Hua

A Ms=8.0 earthquake striked the most of the China on May 12th, 2008, and brought about near 90,000 deaths and about 700 billion dollars of direct economic losses. This earthquake impacted all kind of transportation system including highway, railway, airline and water carriage systems in a huge area. This paper provides many records of observed damage to transportation system by site investigation. The seismic performances related to transportation system in meizoseismal zonation were described in details in this paper. Occurring in a mountainous region, this earthquake severely damaged the transportation system because of strong earthquake motion, near the active faults, trigged landslides and debris, rock and soil collapses, and large ground deformation. Transportation system performance degradation was due to not only physical damages of equipments and buildings, but also the shortage of the electric powers and supporting from other lifeline systems. some statitical laws among transportation system, slope failure and fault distance, and some valuable measures for resisting strong earthquake motion, secondary earthquake-induced geological disaster and lessons learned for damage prevention and system recovery to lifeline system were also discussed in this paper.