This proposal requests funds to permit Dr. Mihran S. Agbabian, Dr. Sami F. Masri, and Dr. James C. Anderson, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Southern California, to pursue with Dr. Seng-Lip Lee, Dr. Somsak Swaddiwudhipong, Dr. Ser-Tong Quek, Dr. Chi Young Liaw, and Dr. Thambirajah Balendra, Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore, for a period of 24 months, a program of cooperative experimental and analytical research on nonlinear structural systems under earthquake loads. The following three research topics will be studied: ductility demand for short period steel frames; behavior of steel frames subjected to earthquake motions in both vertical and horizontal directions; and beam-column moment connections for severe earthquakes. The main goals of this project are to evaluate the need to include stiffer plates in box columns at the connection to beams, to evaluate the ability of current element codes to predict the nonlinear behavior occurring at the joint under limit loads, and to accurately predict the capacity of building structures to resist damaging earthquake motions without failure or collapse. The research will add an international cooperative dimension to ongoing research at the University of Southern California (USC) supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ECE8617623. The proposed cooperative research should provide valuable data to the earthquake engineering profession on structural response to severe earthquake shaking. This cooperative project will make available to the USC team a large scale test facility on which full-size building components can be tested rather than half-scale, as at USC. Comparison of results obtained at the two facilities would provide valuable information on scaling effects in such tests. This project is relevant to the objectives of the Science in Developing Countries Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. scientists and engineers and their counterparts in developing countries through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit. Both groups of collaborators are highly respected scientists who have productive publication records in the field of the proposal.
