The paper will conclude with a look toward the future of structural steel research.

　　1. Research on steel bridges

　　The American Association of State Transportation and Highway Officials (AASTHO) is the authority that promulgates design standards for bridges in the US. In 1994 it has issued a new design specification which is a Limit States Design standard that is based on the principles of reliability theory. A great deal of work went into the development of this code in the past decade, especially on calibration and on the probabilistic evaluation of the previous specification.