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200701loading STructures PDF
200701loading STructures PDF
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an overview of the historical development of Australian loading specifica-
tions followed by discussions on the regulatory and policy aspects of the development. These included the
historical and rational reasons for the development of each individual standard as well as the state of the cur-
rent system. It is hoped that practitioners will gain some insights into the background and principles under-
pinning the system that is currently in place.
how these loads are to be used in combinations in γQ is the specified load factor for the nominated ac-
design. tion effect QN.
In 1971, there was a change in designation to Ф is the specified capacity factor for the nominated
AS1170 which is still in place today. The major resistance RN.
change, however, occurred in 1989 with the conver- ‘specified’ here means to be specified in an Austra-
sion to Limit States Design (LSD). The loading lian Standard and ‘nominated’ means to be nomi-
standard became the ‘mother’ of all structural stan- nated in the Building Code of Australia or Austra-
dards, driving the whole design process. Major lian Standard.
changes introduced with the LSD conversion in- The relationship between these quantities is illus-
cluded: trated in Fig. 1.
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EJSE Special Issue: Loading on Structures (2007)
All other matters are dealt with in the Australian - Buildings of Importance Level 1: not expect to sur-
Standards. The relevant Standards are also refer- vive
enced in the Building Code as they have become - Buildings of Importance Level 2: expect not to col-
parts of the regulatory system. lapse but substantially damaged
It is worth noting that ‘Standards’ as prepared by - Buildings of Importance Level 3: expect to survive
SA are ‘voluntary’ standards. They become manda- with some damage
tory only if they are referenced in government regu- - Buildings of Importance Level 4: expect to survive
lations. There might be structures that are not within intact and continue to function
the jurisdiction of the BCA (e.g. mining structures)
where it is advisable to check with the appropriate This is the rational for specifying lower annual
authorities whether SA publications are approved for probability of exceedance of the design events for
use in design. higher level of importance of buildings.
The act of ‘referencing in the BCA’ is the only
independent checking mechanism available to en- c) The regulatory specified design events are MINI-
sure that the Australian Standards are not in conflict MUM requirements. The levels are not necessar-
with government policies such as Competition Pol- ily the most cost effective. The designers can al-
icy or other regulations such as Trade Practices Act. ways choose to design for a better level of
It is expected that, in the future, the examination of protection. This may be worth considering if a
Australian Standards for referencing in the Building small increase in cost will result in substantial in-
Code of Australia will be pursued with more rigor crease in safety or performance.
than current practice.
6 STRUCTURAL RELIABILITY
5 RISK MANAGEMENT AND LOADING
SPECIFICATIONS There are various ways of defining the reliability
of structure using the model of Fig. 1. The most
From the building regulatory perspective, loading commonly accepted measure is the probability of
specifications can be considered as a tool for risk failure pF as outlined in ISO2394 - General princi-
management of buildings against natural or man- ples on reliability for structures (ISO, 1998), i.e.
made disasters. The Importance Levels (ABCB,
2002) reflect the values and the expectations the pF = Pr { R < Q }
community place on these types of buildings. The
specification of the design events is the method used The results are usually stated in terms of a safety
to describe the varying building performance expec- index β defined by
tation for different classes of buildings against ex-
treme events. pF = Φ(-β)
The following points should be noted:
where Φ( ) denotes the cumulative distribution func-
a) The design events for different natural phenomena tion of a standardized unit normal variate.
need not be the same. The basic design event for
Importance Level 2 buildings and structures, for The safety implicit in Australian structural stan-
example, is set at 1:500 for wind and earthquake dards was based on estimates of pF for a 50 year pe-
and 1:150 for snow. The decision should be made riod. A fairly extensive collection of these studies
based on the consequences of failure caused by a was reported in a special publication by the Institu-
particular phenomenon. In reality, the current re- tion of Engineers Australia (1985). Structural reli-
quirements were derived from a process called ability theory had two major applications in the de-
‘code calibration’ to match actual practice. velopment of Limit State Design. One was to correct
b) While the design events are specified for ultimate any major anomalies in safety within and between
limit states, the performance expectation at ulti- different sets of material design rules and the other
mate limit states was never defined precisely. It is was in the derivation of a basic set of load combina-
generally accepted that the structure is expected tions for design.
not to collapse but substantially damaged when
this condition is reached. The interpretation of the
performance expectations for a 1:500 event of 7 LOAD COMBINATIONS
wind or earthquake for buildings of different Im-
portance Level might be as follows: Prior to 1989, load combinations were given
separately in each material design standard. The in-
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EJSE Special Issue: Loading on Structures (2007)
troduction of LSD provided an opportunity to unify These Standards are referenced (or about to be
different sets of load combinations into a single set referenced) in the BCA and therefore are part of the
to be placed in the Loading Standard. The adopted building regulatory system.
load combination set was the result of extensive reli-
ability analysis aiming at achieving reasonable con- This series resulted from the effort to produce
sistency in reliability levels for different combina- joint Australia - New Zealand Standards. Two major
tions and material characteristics. changes are worth noting:
In addition to the use of reliability analysis, the
load combinations for ultimate limit states were a) The introduction of Part 0 - General principles
based on a simple rule for the combination of peak where all design requirements and the methods
loads that stated the peak combinations of independ- for demonstrating compliance are discussed.
ent loads resulted from the combinations of the peak These include design events for safety, load com-
of one load and the arbitrary point-in-time values of binations, robustness and serviceability.
other loads in the combination. This rule acknowl-
edged that the probability of simultaneous occur- (i) For the specification of the design events for
rences of peak loads is very rare. safety, AS1170.0 refers to the BCA. This ar-
For serviceability consideration, load levels for rangement resulted from the separation of ‘so-
short term and long term effects were proposed as cial policy’ and ‘standardized processes’ as
benchmarks. Two sets of loads and load combina- discussed earlier.
tions were given to represent the following condi-
tions with five percent chance of being exceeded: (ii) The only major change to the load combina-
tions from previous editions is the load factor
a) Short term actions in which the specified service- for permanent load when acting in opposition
ability loads were peak loads in a single year. to wind or other loads from 0.8 to 0.9. This
b) Long term action in which the specified service- revision was made to align the practice with
ability loads were average loads over the lifetime those of New Zealand and the USA.
of the building.
(iii) The specification for structural robustness is
somewhat problematical. The specification of
8 CURRENT AUSTRALIAN LOADING minimum resistance for members and con-
SPECIFICATION SYSTEM nections is based on current accepted practice
but does not address the issue in any mean-
The current Australian loading specification sys- ingful way.
tem has three components: AS1170 Series, Deriva-
tive Loading Specifications and Loadings on special (iv) The serviceability criteria are included as an
structures. ‘informative’ appendix. This implies that
there is considerable room for ‘engineering
judgment’ in serviceability design, as it
8.1 AS1170 Series
should be. In regulatory terms, it means that
This is the major Australian loading specification while it is mandatory to consider serviceabil-
applicable to buildings and other structures. It in- ity conditions, the exact criteria to be used in
cludes the following parts: design are still up to the designer judgment.
AS/NZS 1170.0 Structural design actions Part 0: b) Earthquake Loading Standard: In contrast to
General principles (SA/SNZ, 2002a) other parts of the AS1170 Series, Part 4 - Earth-
AS/NZS 1170.1 Structural design actions Part 1: quake loads contains considerable material design
Permanent, imposed and other actions (SA/SNZ, requirements that are further supplemented in ma-
2002b) terial design standards in the form of appendices.
AS/NZS 1170.2 Structural design actions Part 2: Attempts to have a joint standard with New Zea-
Wind actions (SA/SNZ, 2002c) land on earthquake have been unsuccessful; not
AS/NZS 1170.3 Structural design actions Part 3: only because the seismic conditions are funda-
Snow actions (SA/SNZ, 2003) mentally different but also the design philosophy
AS1170.4 Structural design actions Part 4: Earth- and practice in the two countries are also radi-
quake actions (The current version is still the 1993 cally different. A joint earthquake standard would
version but a new version - Australia only - is ex- need a large educational campaign to explain the
pected to be published soon) changes and is considered not to be in the na-
tional interest.
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EJSE Special Issue: Loading on Structures (2007)