This is a cooperative project supported under the US-PRC Protocol on Earthquake Studies, Annex III. This project is intended to establish a reliability-based earthquake resistant criteria for the design of reinforced concrete building structures. The proposed design criteria will explicitly consider the ductility and strength requirement. The load and resistance factors will be used for the design of buildings. The design criteria will produce risk-consistent structures under various design conditions. Thus, the buildings designed according to recommended criteria will have adequate strength and ductility to resist earthquakes. The US research team will primarily concentrate on the necessary analytical developments, while the PRC group will be mainly responsible for providing pertinent laboratory and field experimental data. The PRC group is also expected to supply damage data observed in China. In this respect, the US researchers will also collect and analyze the damage data observed in the US and elsewhere (particularly in Japan and Mexico).
