Research on Seismic Design and Retrofitting of Building Structures

Dear Colleagues,

In recent earthquakes in seismic-prone areas worldwide, many buildings experienced severe damage, resulting in the loss of a significant number of human lives. For example, the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria damaged over 100,000 buildings and killed more than 50,000 people. Such earthquakes necessitate the quick and urgent retrofit of existing structures to satisfy the needs of society for resilient cities in seismic zones. In view of this imminent problem, seismic resilience has attracted the attention of many researchers, building owners, and decision makers. Seismic resilience can be measured through the recovery capacity of structures and their ability to resume their functions immediately after an earthquake. It is well known that seismic design and retrofit play key roles in the mitigation of the seismic vulnerability of structures. The best way to protect buildings from seismic damage is to design buildings with a seismic load. However, in many countries, many structures were designed prior to the introduction of seismic codes without adequate detailing and reinforcement for seismic protection.

As seismic design and retrofit techniques are complex and dynamic processes that are constantly evolving and improving with new research and experience, there have been numerous theoretical and experimental studies to develop and improve seismic design/retrofit techniques worldwide, and various state-of-the-art technical guidelines for seismic design, performance assessment, retrofit, and rehabilitation have been published, and new technologies are under development all around the world.

From this perspective, the objective of this Special Issue is to encourage the production of scientific works that can introduce and share state-of-the-art technologies for the seismic design and retrofitting of buildings.

Theoretical and experimental studies, as well as numerical simulation and predictive models, are welcome to be submitted to this Special Issue. Reports and review articles are also welcomed. The thematic areas of concern for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Performance-based seismic design;
• Seismic vulnerability assessment;
• Seismic retrofit techniques and their application;
• Seismic energy dissipation devices;
• Seismic response of buildings;
• Passive and active systems for earthquake protection;
• Repair and strengthening;
• Site effects and geotechnical aspects;
• Foundation design for earthquake loading.

Prof. Dr. Jinkoo Kim
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• seismic resilience
• building retrofit
• seismic design
• performance-based design
• seismic vulnerability assessment
• energy dissipation devices
• seismic response
• earthquake protection systems
• repair and strengthening