ABSTRACT
The advent of performance-based design specifications for bridges occurred in 2002 with the Japanese Specifications for Highway Bridges (Japan Road Association, 2002). The required bridge performances are clearly described for Normal Situations, Frequent Earthquake Situations, Rare Earthquake Situations, and so forth. These Specifications also call for limit states of structural components so that integrating the components that are verified for their limit state criteria can be considered to have achieved the required performance of total bridge systems. According to performance-based design, design requirements are clearly specified, while the existing detailed design methods, including computational methods and acceptable limits, are specified as typical acceptable solutions. Thus, the introduction of performancebased design encourages designers to apply advanced or better solutions in practice, even if these solutions are not presented in the Specifications.
