High Street Christchurch
The nation was galvanised on 22 February by the devastating Magnitude 6.3 earthquake, with empathy and commitment of resources immediately flowing locally, nationally and internationally to Christchurch in support of the rescue and recovery effort.
Christchurch utilizes natural stone pavements extensively on Steintec paving Mortar throughout the City CBD, including the current reinstatement outside the Civic Offices of the Christchurch City Council.
The Christchurch pavements when stressed at such extremes from these earthquakes and in the case of accelerations approaching or exceeding G, clearly, SteinTec Paving Mortars used with rigidly set pavers have the clear advantage over flexibly bedded ones which have suffered the problem of not moving as fast as the ground, particularly in the case of vertical accelerations causing wide spread failure.
This is evident from obvious mechanisms such as liquefaction (ejected sand and silt), differential settlement and lateral spreading. SteinTec has exceeded all expectations and in situations has out performed the reinforced concrete slabs and natural stone. (images above)
The character of shaking is influenced by the nature of the source and by local site effects. In Christchurch, the local effects have two sources, the deep 700m odd of sediments beneath the city and the upper 0-30m of post glacial sediments, which is often very loose and varies greatly over short distances. As a consequence, shaking also varies markedly over short distances.
Steintec New Zealand
Category: Marshalls, Natural Stone, News, Steintec
