Existing Structures—A Regulatory Antagonism?
Publication: ASCE Inspire 2023
ABSTRACT
Dealing with existing structures, either for assessing and/or judging the structural qualities or for revamping, mending, or strengthening, inevitably provokes a dilemma: the dilemma of existing, decade-long successfully used structures which exhibit no signs of damage, overstraining, or fatigue, not complying with the rules to be followed when taking the actual standards and regulations as a base for the deliberations. This disaccord is in many cases resolvable by addressing the fundamental hierarchy of standards and by using structure-specific, that is, individualised assessments methods based on the principles laid out, for example, in EN 1990:2021 “Basis of Structural Design.” Instead of using lump-sum safety factors, the standard procedure to be found in the structural engineer’s toolbox, this strategy leads, via the determination of structure-related failure probabilities and the comparison of these values with the generally accepted reference value, 10−6 per year for typical building constructions, to a bespoken and more generalised formulation of the structure’s quality.
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REFERENCES
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Published online: Nov 14, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Building design
- Buildings
- Business management
- Construction engineering
- Construction methods
- Design (by type)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Existing buildings
- Fatigue (material)
- Infrastructure
- Infrastructure resilience
- Management methods
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials engineering
- Practice and Profession
- Quality control
- Structural behavior
- Structural design
- Structural engineering
- Structural safety
- Structural strength
- Structures (by type)
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