Structural Safety
Structural safety considerati
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Structural safety considerations generally relate the protection of a building's occupants. They may, therefore, comprise issues ranging from structural integrity to fire safety. The design of all structures involves an evaluation of the following three characteristics: Strength, rigidity, and stability. Although strength is most important for lower buildings, rigidity and stability become more significant as building height increases. Moreover, during their lifetime, structure are subjected to a variety of loads. Inevitably, these forces may alter a building's condition such that varying degrees of deterioration are incurred. Damage accumulation may ultimately cause failure or collapse. In addition to stress though, building safety considerations may also relate to fire. Fire safety designs primarily attempt to limit fire spread. Various measures which may be employed to achieve this objective include compartmentalization, detection systems, and sprinklers. Building regulations represent established design conventions (5:130). These mandates significantly influence the construction process (12:127). The codes presently in use have a long history. The earliest building regulations date back to at least 3000 B.C. During the ancient Babylonian Empire of Hammurabi, various building statutes addressed building safety and durability (15:8-9). Later codes focused on both structural and fire safety. In the 1880s, for example, building codes regulated such things
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(14:16-21)."
One of the most influential considerations in structural design calculations is the potential for failure. Fortunately, structural failures are rare events. Allen (1981) calculated the failure rate in Canada at roughly 2 x 10-5 per year. Hence, such failures contribute very little to the risk of death. The probability of dying in a collapsing building is about equivalent to the chance of being hit by lightning. However, when structural failures do occur, 90 percent are associated with gross human error (8:8-14, 33).
Modern structural engineering involves the scientific method. As far back as the Renaissance, engineers have been using the process of experiment and prediction to quantitate the strength of trusses and beams. These data then form a basis from which estimates of allowable stress can be calculated (8:33).
When codes and design standards for steel structures were introduced in the late nineteenth century, rates of failure immediately declined. More recently, multiple-factor safety formats have been applied to such considerations. These formats give engineers flexibility. The various structural malperformance possibilities are first classified. Essentially, each basic random variable is
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Approximate Word count = 3316
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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