ABSTRACT
The paper reviews the current status of research works concerning the influence of strain-rate on the behaviour of steel members. The strain-rate is very important in the case of near-source earthquakes, where very high horizontal and vertical velocities are recorded. The range of strain-rate for these cases is 10−1 to 101 sec−1, higher than the values currently considered in design. The main effect of strain rate for monotonic or cyclic loading is to transform a ductile plastic collapse into a brittle fracture.
