Architectural Resilience: Investigating the Relationship Between House Shapes and Earthquake Damage

Overview

As the population grows and urbanization increases, encountering cost-effective, strong, earthquake-resistant homes is essential. Urbanized areas are more prone to earthquake damage. 45 U.S states are at moderate to high risk for earthquake damage, and earthquakes cause billions of dollars in property and structural damage. Earthquake-resistant homes are important because they can withstand the seismic wave energy from an earthquake, minimizing economic losses, reducing injuries, and decreasing repair costs. The average annual cost of damage and economic losses from earthquakes is $14.7 billion. The purpose of this project was to investigate different house shapes and compare them to determine how much damage occurs to each structure. The goal of this project was to discover the answer to the question: What shape of a house would be the most resistant to damage during an earthquake? It was hypothesised that the square-shaped house would be the most resistant to damage during an earthquake. 5 different shapes of houses were built, each with the same volume. To test this surface, 2 soccer balls were dropped simultaneously from 145 centimeters above the testing surface (a small trampoline) to create the earthquake effect. The damage to each structure (data) was the number of pieces that broke for each house shape. The average amount of damage to each house shape was 1.4 for the square-shaped house, 1.8 for the rectangular-shaped house, 1.9 for the trapezoid-shaped house, 3.3 for the L-shaped house, and 2.5 for the multilayer-shaped house. These results indicated that the square-shaped house is the most resistant to damage during an earthquake. With this, a square-shaped house is a regular, symmetrical, and balanced structure with a consistent and steady center of mass and center of resistance, allowing the house to move steadily together, resulting in less damage to the structure. Moving forward, this data can inform better, safer construction, especially regarding aspects such as simple, symmetrical house designs. Not only are simple and symmetrical house shapes cost-effective, but they also require less construction time. If houses are built more effectively, they will be more resistant to damage during an earthquake, ensuring the safety of the people and minimizing the impact of disasters. With this, less money can be spent on repairing damaged structures, and more money can be allocated to what is necessary to benefit a community. For future research, a replica of a real-world building using real-world building materials could be created, incorporating soil, wind, and multi-directional earthquake effects. With this, a more effective, cheaper warning system could be created to prevent earthquake damage.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Applied Mechanics (Junior Division) · Entry J-02-04

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• CSEF Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project