Advances in steel structures: proceedings of the Second International Conference on Advances in Steel Structures 1, 15-17 December 1999, Hong Kong, China vol 1

This book publishes the proceedings from the Third International Workshop on Connections in Steel Structures: Behaviour, Strength and Design held in Trento, Italy, 29-31 May 1995. The workshop brought together the world's foremost experts in steel connections research, development, fabrication and design. The scope of the papers reflects state-of-the-art issues in all areas of endeavour, and manages to bring together the needs of researchers as well as designers and fabricators. Topics of particular importance include connections for composite (steel-concrete) structures, evaluation methods and reliability issues for semi-rigid connections and frames, and the impact of extreme loading events such as those imposed by major earthquakes. The book highlights novel methods and applications in the field and ensures that designers and other members of the construction industry gain access to the new results and procedures. This book contains 38 papers presented at the seventh Working Conference on 'Reliability and Optimization of Structural Systems' held at Boulder, Colorado, USA, on April 2-4, 1996. The Working Conference was organized by the IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) Working Group 7.5 of Technical Committee 7 and was the seventh in a series of similar conferences. The objectives of the Working Group and hence this publication are:

• to promote modern structural systems optimization and reliability theory,
• to advance international co-operation in the field of structural system optimization and reliability theory,
• to stimulate research, development and application of structural system optimization and reliability theory,
• to further dissemination and exchange of information on reliability and optimization of structural systems, and
• to encourage education in structural system organization and reliability theory.

This book contains 38 papers presented at the seventh Working Conference on 'Reliability and Optimization of Structural Systems' held at Boulder, Colorado, USA, on April 2-4, 1996. The Working Conference was organized by the IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) Working Group 7.5 of Technical Committee 7 and was the seventh in a series of similar conferences. The objectives of the Working Group and hence this publication are:

• to promote modern structural systems optimization and reliability theory,

• to advance international co-operation in the field of structural system optimization and reliability theory,

• to stimulate research, development and application of structural system optimization and reliability theory,

• to further dissemination and exchange of information on reliability and optimization of structural systems, and

• to encourage education in structural system organization and reliability theory

These two volumes of proceedings contain 9 invited keynote papers and 126 contributed papers to be presented at the Second International Conference on Advances in Steel Structures held on 15-17 December 1999 in Hong Kong. The conference is a sequel to the International Conference on Advances in Steel Structures held in Hong Kong in December 1996.
The conference will provide a forum for discussion and dissemination by researchers and designers of recent advances in the analysis, behaviour, design and construction of steel structures. The papers to be presented at the conference cover a wide spectrum of topics and were contributed from over 15 countries around the world. They report the current state-of-the art and point to future directions of structural steel research.
This work consists of the third International Workshop on Connections in Steel Structures, held in Italy in 1995. It includes assessments of research and developments in steel construction, considering connections as key elements. Topics covered include connection modelling and cyclic response. This volume presents the essence of research undertaken since the 1950s into the difficult problems of the stability of steel and steel-and-concrete composite structures and their components. It focuses not only on theory and computation but also on experimental verification Two significant earthquakes hit Italy in the last decades, procuring widespread damage and many victims: the Friuli earthquake of 1976 and the Irpinia earthquake of 1980.