Introduction

Any structure can be designed \& constructed to resist earthquake forces. This does not necessarily mean that there should not be any damage to strucutre at all. The design philosophy of IS 1893 says that for minor earthquakes there should not be any damage, for moderate earthquakes, there may be some non-structural damage and for major earthquakes the structure may damage, however, it should not collapse. For ensuring the above design philosophy, we must understand the nonlinear behaviour of structures. With the rapid advancement in the technology, now it is becoming easy to test the behaviour of material for static and dynamic loading. Results from such tests will be used in developing the appropriate constitutive models of material behaviour that fits in numerical simulation of structures.

Some ongoing projects in this area are:

Performance based design

Collapse analysis of structures

Pounding problems in congested areas

Numerical modeling of non-engineered structures

Dynamic behaviour of water tanks

Nonlinear analysis of plates