COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

The ultimate goal of this new U.S.-Croatian partnership is to develop cost-effective new ways of designing buildings and other structures for regions of seismic risk. During his three-week visit with Mete Sozen in October-November 2000, Vladimir Sigmund of the J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek gained many new insights into the state of the art in this important field of engineering. During his visit, he and his host worked out the objectives for a future joint project aimed at applying the concept of performance-based design under conditions prevalent in the Balkans and other less-developed regions. While performance-based design (PBD) has helped the U.S. and other developed countries to build structures that are more resistant to earthquakes, its intensive analytical requirements make it difficult to apply in regions where resources are scarce, including the Balkans. Sozen and Sigmund are therefore proposing to create a simplified version of PBD that will not require analysis of all possible deformation parameters for all sorts of structures. Instead, their "Balkan Idiom" system will be based on improving a simple type of construction that has already proven popular and economical in the Balkans, namely buildings with structural wall systems (i.e., a flat plate supported by columns and stabilized by walls).

The two partners state that "the main goal of the proposed research is to establish the domain where simple design methods are applicable and produce satisfactory results. The derived procedures will be simple and usable by the profession, and all sources of randomness and uncertainty (earthquake loading, material and element behavior, etc.) will be incorporated. Their application should result in performance that is predictable and will produce consistent seismic protection for new structures." They are currently preparing a proposal to NSF to obtain support for their continuing collaboration on this important project.