Dynamic response of traditional and buttressed reinforced concrete minarets

• A strengthening technique for RC minarets under height of 45 m was proposed.
• This strengthening technique can be applied to all RC minarets.
• This strengthening technique can be adapted to all RC minarets.
• Technique can be adapted without interrupting architectural and historical details.

The destructive 17 August 1999 Mw 7.4 Kocaeli and 12 November 1999 Mw 7.2 Düzce Earthquake caused significant damage on reinforced concrete (RC) minarets and many of them severely damaged or collapsed causing the loss of lives. Damages or collapses of these RC minarets after the miserable actions of nature compel us to revise our knowledge about the dynamic response. The experiences from the catastrophic strong ground motions also dictate to the practitioners that alternative structural load carrying systems should be used and/or the seismic resistance of widely used systems should be improved. In this study, the dynamic behaviors of traditional and proposed buttressed RC minarets were compared with each other. Findings of this study show that using buttressed structural load carrying systems in the earthquake prone regions is beneficial and these supporting system behaved well when compared to traditional RC systems.