A new simple formula to evaluate the risk of furniture overturning

Several people have been injured because of the overturning or sliding of furniture, or falling objects from the furniture during past earthquakes. For these reasons, it becomes more important to find the criteria of overturning of furniture and its prevention against overturning during earthquakes. The overturning of a non-anchored body (such as furniture) during an earthquake is caused by the rocking motion. The purpose of this study is to compare and improve the equation proposed by Kaneko which expresses the relation between overturning ratios of rectangular rigid bodies of parallel pipe shape and the input excitations. Numerical simulations have been conducted using several non-structural elements of rectangular shape with different widths and heights. They were subjected to real earthquake floor motions of different typical buildings in California which have been monitored in real time. Based on the numerical results, a new formula has been proposed while results are compared with the ones obtained from Kaneko and with the model proposed by G.W. Housner in 1963.