This award supports the participation of American scientists and engineers in a U.S.-Japan joint seminar on earthquake-resistant design of lifelines facilities and countermeasures against soil liquefaction to be held in Tokyo, Japan. The co-organizers are Professor Jean-Pierre Bardet at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Professor Masanori Hamada at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. The meeting will bring together research scientists from the U.S. and Japan, two countries where important and exciting progress in this area of science is being undertaken. During past earthquakes, soil liquefaction has repeatedly damaged lifelines (gas, water and electric utility lines) and foundations of bridges and highway overpasses. There has been much research undertaken on the effects of liquefaction-induced deformation on foundations and lifelines systems in the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquakes. This resulted in proposed engineering solutions that mitigate the devastating effects of soil liquefaction in future earthquakes. These findings will be discussed, as they are critical to the implementation of performance-based design in geotechnical and structural engineering in the United States and Japan. The meeting will then define directions for future research in geotechnical earthquake engineering.
The co-organizers have complementary scientific expertise in the field. This enables them to evaluate and attract the best scientists and engineers to participate. The seminar is expected to yield results that will impact not only engineering practice but also fundamental research in engineering. The seminar organizers have made a special effort to involve postdocs, graduate students and undergraduate students as both participants and observers. The exchange of ideas and data with Japanese experts in the field will enable U.S. participants to advance their own work, and will set the stage for future collaborative projects. Following the seminar the organizers plan to establish a workshop web page. Conference proceedings will be published on this web site.
