Holds MSc Degrees in Civil Engineering and in Nuclear Engineering and a PhD in Structural Engineering from MIT, where he taught till 1983 to the rank of Associate Professor. Honorary President of the International Federation of Structural Concrete (fib) and Honorary Member of the International Association of Earthquake Engineering. Currently Editor of “Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics”, Vice Chairman of CEN/TC250 “Structural Eurocodes” (2013-19) and Director of the International Association of Earthquake Engineering (2012-20). President of the International Federation of Structural Concrete (fib) in 2009-10 and Deputy President in 2007-08. Chairman of CEN/TC250/SC8 “Design of Structures for Earthquake Resistance” during the development of the European Standard Eurocode 8 (1998-2005). Author of “Seismic Design, Assessment and Retrofitting of Concrete Buildings” (Springer, 2009), lead author of “Seismic Design of Concrete Buildings to Eurocode 8″ (CRC Press, 2015) and of “Designers’ Guide to EN1998-1 and EN1998-5: Eurocode 8-Seismic actions, buildings, foundations & retaining structures” (ICE Publishing 2005, translated to Italian, Russian, Greek), co-author of “Designers’ Guide to EN1998-2: Eurocode 8-Bridges” (ICE Publishing 2012) and author or co-author of 29 Chapters in international books. Edited or co-edited four books published by Springer and 10 other international books. Has about 85 papers in international journals, over 30 keynote or invited lectures at international conferences and about 110 papers in international conference proceedings. He received the 1993 ACI Wason Medal for the best paper in materials.
ABSTRACT - Impact of experimental research on the Eurocode 8 provisions for RC structures
The case of design, assessment or retrofitting reinforced (RC) concrete structures, and buildings in particular, for earthquake resistance according to the Eurocodes is used to demonstrate the potential impact of experimental results on codes and standards. The emphasis is on new ideas for the forthcoming second-generation Eurocode 8, although examples of provisions of the current, first generation, are also included. First comes an overview of the development of practical models for the realistic estimation of the deformations at yielding and at ultimate conditions from a database of few thousand cyclic tests on RC members of all types of cross-section and detailing. The very large number of tests and the fitting or calibration of two very different types of models (purely empirical vs physical models employing different variables) allows quantification of the sources of scatter: interlab vs intralab variability, model uncertainty vs experimental biases and errors. A related issue is the effective lateral stiffness and deformation capacity of buildings with plain (smooth) bars, for which the usual cantilever or double-fixity type of member specimens are not representative of the bond and anchorage conditions in a full building having the column bars lap-spliced at floor levels; in that case, one has to resort to large- or full-scale seismic tests of multistory buildings for insight and development or calibration of code-type models. Similar is the issue of multistory RC frames, a bay of which is converted into a full-fledged RC wall by infilling the space between the two columns and the floor beams with RC, connected to the existing RC members through various means. One has to resort to multi-story test specimens of realistic size and scale, in order to develop or calibrate rules for the design and detailing of the connection and for the estimation of the effective lateral stiffness, cyclic resistance and cyclic deformation capacity of the composite wall resulting from the infilling. Last, but not least, the seismic response, design and detailing of large-size RC walls which are allowed to rock on a rigid or soft base is addressed.
