Failure Of Buildings
On April 27th, 2022, the Quality Assurance at the Catholic University in Erbil (CUE) organized a seminar entitled “failure of buildings” presented by Dr. Maher ALSamaani, architecture Department.
During the seminar Dr. Maher explained how Failure in buildings can result in loss of lives, time and invested money, wasting of building materials, owner and contractor prestige, and reputation loss. Failure happens when the applied stresses on the structural members are greater than the strength of the material of these members. Most failures start with small cracks that may develop into larger cracks and deformation in the building ending sometimes with collapse.
Failure can be attributed to many reasons such as structural design mistakes, construction materials not conforming to the specifications, improper implementation, exposure to severe environmental conditions, overloading the building, soil failure, near new construction…etc.
Treatment of failed structures can be very expensive and, in some cases, the building needs to be demolished.
In the end, Dr. Maher answered all questions raised by the attendees. Lastly, Dr. Maher received an appreciation certificate from Quality Assurance for his diligent work and outstanding information provided to the faculty at CUE.
