Message from Director
The project of New Concept of Structural Damage Control Strategy on Upgrading Structural Seismic Performance is supported by the High-tech Research Center Maintenance Sections, Science Research Promotion Projects of Private Universities for FY2007, MEXT, Japan. It is co-proposed by 12 people from three departments (Civil, Architecture and Environment) in School of Science and Technology, Meijo University. A people is added in FY2008 and it is organized by 13 professors now.
The background and the objective of the project proposal are as follows. Great dangers exist in the Tokai region for the generation of Tokai, Tonankai and Nankai earthquakes, especially that the probability of Tokai earthquake in future 30 years reaches to 87%. The worst scenery is once the Tokai-Tonankai-Nankai earthquakes happen at the same time, vast areas from Kanto to Kyushu would be greatly damaged and it would lead to over 24,700 dead ( 4 times as many as Kobe earthquake), and the damage cost would reach to as much as the national budget (8 times as Kobe earthquake). To guarantee the safety of residents and infrastructures from such huge earthquakes, it is important to maintain basic functions of high density modern cities and an efficient aseismic retrofit of structures is indispensable. Moreover, because the upper bound of recent earthquake and the generation region are not ascertain, from the viewpoint that aseismic performance of aftershock equals to the large earthquake or a main shock, new structural damage control design strategy of upgrading seismic performance techniques based on structure-soil interaction by high level computation and experiments are developed.
The research of the project is that ①High performance computer system，② Three dimensional earthquake ground motion shaking table，③ Experimental equipment for large-scale structures，④ precision hollow shear test instrument．Through a common effect in out project team, the latest equipments and instruments are widely used and the advanced research achievement would be obtained and is useful for society at the same time. If the project could be understood, we wish further support, guidance, and encouragement from everybody.