Preface

In a friendly meeting between Professor Manolis Papadrakakis (Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece), Dr. Michalis Fragiadakis (Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece), Dr. Vissarion Papadopoulos (Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece) and Dr. Aram Soroushian (Structural Engineering Research Centre, International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, Tehran, Iran), on June 2017, the idea of this special issue was initiated. Many invitations for paper submission were sent to specialists, academics, and experts, around the globe, while two members were added to the guest editorial team, and the Journal of Applied and Computational Mechanics was set for the publication. The received papers first experienced a round of revision for enhancement of the papers and then were subjected to the ordinary peer-revision procedure of the Journal of Applied and Computational Mechanics. The consequence is the six papers presented in this special issue.