Why Were The Construction Rules Revised In India?

For many years, engineers across India used twisted iron rods to build skeletons of homes.
While these seemed to create quite a strong structure for homes during the construction, soon afterwards, they would start corroding when in contact with the moisture from the concrete.
Naturally, houses had to be repaired every few years, and even then, had a hard time standing up to natural disasters like earthquakes.
However, not many deaths occurred from collapsing buildings, since the earthquakes themselves were low in magnitude.

All that changed with the 1993 Earthquake in Latur, Maharashtra

The quake, which measured 6.4 on the Richter Scale, levelled an extensive region, causing nearly 10,000 deaths and the collapse of 30,000 houses.
That was a wake-up call for the construction industry, as engineers and architects across the country started looking for new ways to build earthquake-resistant homes.

Developed to resist vibrations, TMT steel bars offer a ray of hope
TMT bars were developed by major iron & steel manufacturers across India to withstand the intense vibrations generated by earthquakes.
The bars have a core surrounded by multiple layers of metal, offering tremendous ductility and damage resistance.
Corrosion resistance is also one of the properties of these bars, provided their outermost layer is treated with rust-resistant chemicals.
All these factors come together to make houses built with ideal TMT bars, highly resistant to earthquakes of low to medium magnitudes.
TMT bars also last longer than other variants
Iron rods have a hard time withstanding the pressure exerted by large quantities of concrete.
Naturally, when faced with vibrations from an earthquake, they collapse easily under the additional pressure, causing buildings to collapse over the inhabitants.
TMT bars, on the other hand, last for decades and thanks to the layered structure, offer superior ductility and strength, keeping homes and the people living in them safe from earthquakes.
With time, new variations of these bars have been developed by TMT steel manufacturers across the country, making it possible for architects to design houses in earthquake-prone regions, which look great and are safe to live in.
In the coming days, this silent revolution in the real estate sector can only be expected to spread further.