"Earthquakes worldwide have clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of reinforced concrete members to degradation in shear strength when subjected to cyclic loading. Such degradation can lead to significant damage to the structure and, possibly, even collapse. With the advancement of performance-based earthquake engineering, where the response of the structure must be traced through all levels of damage, there is a significant need to accurately define the deformation capacity and shear strength for such members. This symposium publication represents an effort from researchers across the globe trying to address this challenging problem.

Although at the time of publication there are some methodologies that can be used in performance-based earthquake engineering, there is a significant need for improved methods better suited for these types of applications. Furthermore, one of the concerns often expressed by researchers is that test data used in the past to develop and calibrate existing models consisted of relatively small data sets. This problem is compounded by differences between experimental studies in aspects such as the type of load history used, the manner in which deformations were recorded during tests, and the definition of displacement and strength at failure.

The recent development of the PEER column database, hosted by the University of Washington, provided a valuable resource to overcome some of these problems. It presented researchers with a larger pool of data, which included the full hysteretic response of every column in the data set. Although this represented a very significant step forward, efforts of this kind should continue to improve the ability of researchers to calibrate and evaluate models for shear strength and deformation capacity."