Objectives
As a result of past research and lessons learned from past earthquakes, steel structures designed and constructed according to modern practice can be expected to meet the performance objective of life safety under severe seismic loading. Current research focuses on minimizing earthquake-induced damage to new steel structures, with the goal of reducing the social and economic disruption caused by future earthquakes. Current research also focuses on retrofit of older, more valuable structures, and on understanding and controlling the collapse behavior of steel structures under extreme seismic loading conditions. At the same time, a new generation of large-scale laboratory facilities for simulating earthquake effects on structures has been commissioned, enabling realistic simulations that were not possible in the past.
To reflect these current trends, the STESSA09 conference objectives are to disseminate research: on minimizing earthquake-induced structural and non-structural damage to new steel structures; on retrofit to improve the seismic performance of existing, critical structures; on understanding the collapse behavior of steel structures under extreme seismic loading; and on utilizing advanced laboratory facilities to understand and improve the seismic performance of steel structures.