The Trend of Earthquake Resistant Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings

Abstract

Eight years have elapsed since the provisions for earthquake resistant design in the Building Standard Law and its Enforcement Order in Japan were fundamentally revised in 1980 after a lapse of 30 years from the legislation. As the time of confusion among the engineers has gone on, the “new” requirements seem to have been stably fixed as the accustomed code. Although they are called “new”, the main current in practice of the design remains in the category of the allowable stress design method as it was. In this paper, it is intended to light up the position of the “new” code requirements by comparing the historical aspects of the earthquake resistant design requirements in Japan with those in United States, and some prospective movements are discussed.