Planning meetings for the second five years of NEES/E-Defense collaboration were held at the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, on January 12-13, 2009, and in Kobe, Japan on September 18-19, 2009. At the January 2009 meeting, an overall theme of "Enabling the Earthquake Resilient City" was adopted for the second five-year phase and high priority research topics were identified. One of these high-priority topics involves studies of the seismic design of high-performance reinforced concrete structures. At the follow-on September 2009 meeting in Kobe, E-Defense staff and Japanese university researchers presented an aggressive research plan that includes testing of two low-rise, large-scale, buildings, one conventional and one innovative, on the E-Defense shake table, the world's largest shake table, in October 2010. To meet this aggressive testing schedule, initial schematic and detailed design of the test specimens must be completed by mid October 2009 and February 2010, respectively, and drawings must be prepared by April 2010. Specimen construction and instrumentation are expected to occur during summer 2010 to enable October 2010 testing. These tests provide an exceptional opportunity for U.S. researchers to further knowledge on the seismic design of reinforced concrete structures, provided the test specimens include lateral force resisting systems with strength and details that are reasonably consistent with U.S. seismic design practice. Extensive discussions at the Kobe planning meeting produced a framework to address this issue, i.e., test specimens that would be of value to both U.S. and Japanese researchers and enable U.S.-Japan collaboration for the 2010 tests, as well as future tests both in Japan and in the U.S. through NSF-supported NEES research (NEESR) projects. This award enables U.S. researcher participation in the October 2010 E-Defense tests. This award supports schematic and final designs for the test specimens, analytical studies of the initial and final designs for specified hazard levels, and modest travel to support the proposed collaboration and enable robust collaboration through subsequent (potential) NSF-supported NEESR studies. This RAPID award will contribute to furthering U.S.-Japan collaboration in earthquake engineering by: (1) maintaining the tradition of strong U.S.-Japan research in the seismic design of reinforced concrete buildings, (2) creating a framework for productive future U.S.-Japan collaboration on high-performance reinforced concrete buildings, (3) establishing a mechanism for data exchange on E-Defense and NEESR projects, and (4) enabling future NEESR projects based on the large-scale E-Defense tests. Results of these studies will be posted on the www.nees.org web site as they are completed and widely publicized so that interested U.S. researchers will have access to information about these activities. Future studies could use data generated from the October 2010 tests for system level validation studies, as well as follow-on studies that investigate issues identified from the tests.
