Resilience of an Observation Wheel in Bangkok: Reflections on March 28, 2025, the Mw 7.7 Mandalay Earthquake

Authors

  • Samard Buddee

    FSE Consultant Co., Ltd., Bangkok 10210, Thailand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/jaeser.v8i3.13125
Received:4 June 2025 | Revised: 10 July 2025 | Accepted: 18 July 2025 | Published Online: 26 July 2025

Abstract

On March 28, 2025, the Mw 7.7 earthquake (EQ) in Mandalay, Myanmar caused the largest amount of damage from a local or regional EQ in modern Thai history. It spread to the capital city of Bangkok, Thailand, an epicentral distance of 1,000 km, where tall buildings swayed and were damaged; most notably, a 33-storey office building collapsed in response. This study aims to determine the safety of an existing observation wheel, located in Bangkok, for resisting EQs in terms of displacements and storey drift ratios of the steel structure, including the stability of existing reinforced concrete foundations. It was built in 2012, when the seismic loads for Bangkok appeared to be very small. Thus, wind “out of service” loadings of 100 mph were considered the dominant lateral force, leading to structures designed primarily for wind. A safety evaluation applied loads by using the original wind loading and updated spectral accelerations including seven selected ground motions for Mw 7.62 EQs from NGA-West2. As a result, the max displacements of the wind and EQ loads were under the IBC 2021 deflection limit, the max storey drift ratios of the EQ loads were under the ATC 40 and DPT 1301/1302-61 storey drift ratio limits, and the shaking effects from the EQ on the foundations were less than the forces from the wind, which governed the foundation design of the existing structure. Consequently, the observation wheel has adequate resilience for resisting seismic loads from EQs, as shown by the March 28, 2025 Mw 7.7 Mandalay EQ.

Keywords:

Resilience; Observation Wheel; Earthquake; Steel Structure; Foundation; Wind

References

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How to Cite

Buddee, S. (2025). Resilience of an Observation Wheel in Bangkok: Reflections on March 28, 2025, the Mw 7.7 Mandalay Earthquake. Journal of Architectural Environment & Structural Engineering Research, 8(3), 26–46. https://doi.org/10.30564/jaeser.v8i3.13125

Issue

Vol. 8 , Iss. 3 (July 2025)

Article Type

Article

License

Copyright © 2025 Samard Buddee

Creative Commons License

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

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