• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.327-343
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• 2005

The European Standards Organisation (CEN) has planned to develop a complete set of harmonized European building standards. The Eurocodes, being the design standards, form part of this total system of European standards, together with standards for fabrication and erection and product standards. After a period of experimental use of the ENV(European Pre Standard)-versions of the Eurocodes, these are now converted into official EN's (European Standards). Design of composite steel and concrete buildings and bridges is covered by Eurocode 4. An overview will be given of the historic development of Eurocode 4, the structure and contents of the EN version and the present status and planning for completion. The Eurocode treatment of some selected technical items will be presented in more detail.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.561-572
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• 2009

Nowadays, Eurocodes have become the reference standards for silo design within the European Union. They include new procedures for load assessment and structural verifications aiming to design safer silos. However, many silo manufacturers are still reluctant to use them (or at least all their prescriptions) because of the loss of competitiveness they are experiencing in comparison with former standards. This paper shows how steel cost of flat-bottomed circular silos varies when different silo geometries and stored materials are considered. The influence of critical structural verifications on steel costs, such as buckling of the silo wall, were also analyzed and some conclusions and practical recommendations for silo designers were proposed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.201-216
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• 2008

The Eurocode system provides limited information regarding the structural fire design of external steel structures. Eurocode 1 provides thermal action for external member but only in steady-state conditions. On the other hand, Eurocode 3 provides a methodology to determine heat transfer to external steelwork, but there is no distinction in cross section shapes and, in addition, the calculated temperature distribution is assumed to be uniform in the cross section. This paper presents the results of a research carried out to develop a new transient heat transfer model for external steel elements to improve the current approach of the Eurocodes. This research was carried out as part of the project EXFIRE "Development of design rules for the fire behaviour of external steel structures", funded by the European Research Programme of the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS).

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 2017

Stainless steel exhibits high ductility and strain hardening capacity in comparison with carbon steel widely used in constructions. To analyze the particular behaviour of stainless steel cover-plate joints, an experimental study was conducted. It showed large ductility and complex failure modes of the joints. A non-linear finite element model was developed to predict the main parameters influencing the behaviour of these joints. The results of this deterministic model allow us to built a meta-model by using the quadratic response surface method, in order to allow for efficient reliability analysis. This analysis is then applied to the assessment of design formulae in the currently used codes of practice. The reliability analysis has shown that the stainless steel joint design according to Eurocodes leads to much lower failure probabilities than the Eurocodes target reliability for carbon steel, which incites revising the resisting model evaluation and consequently reducing stainless steel joint costs. This approach can be used as a basis to evaluate a wide range of steel joints involving complex failure modes, particularly bearing failure.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2011

The introduction of the Eurocodes makes plastic design criteria available also for composite bridges, leading to more economical solutions compared with previous elastic design rules. Particularly for refurbishment old bridges with higher actual traffic loads, up to date outside the scope of the Eurocodes, strengthening should therefore be avoidable or at least be necessary only to a minor extent. For bridges with smaller spans and compact cross sections, the plastic load bearing capacity is clearly justified. In this work, however, the focus is placed on long span continuous composite bridges with deep, longitudinally stiffened girders, susceptible to local buckling. In a first step, the elastic - plastic cross section capacity of the main girder in bending is studied as an isolated case, based on high preloads acting on the steel girder only, due to the common assembling procedure without scaffolding. In a second step, the effects on the whole structure are studied, because utilising the plastic section capacity at midspan leads to a redistribution of internal forces to the supports. Based on the comprehensive study of an old, actual strengthened composite bridge, some limitations for plastic design are identified. Moreover, fully plastic design will sometimes need additional global analysis. Practical recommendations are given for design purposes.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.341-346
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• 2014

The representative Limit State Design(LSD) codes, AASHTO LRFD and Eurocodes, are widely being applied when designing civil structures. However, these codes are only applying tunnel lining design and segments design for shield tunnels. Recently in Europe, the Eurocode 7 committee was trying to create a research group called EG12, but they reluctantly decided not to create EG12 since it could have an impact on some of the other Eurocodes(including Eerocodes 2 and 3). Still there is an effort to continue researching LSD for tunnelling. LSD method will become the norm for the field of civil structural design in the near future. Therefore, it is important to fully understand Eurocode7:Geotechnical design in connection with Eurocode 2 and Eurocode 3. In addition, it is essential to follow international research trends and also to research for application to tunnelling.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2023

This paper traces the drafting of the new EN 1991-1-4 Eurocode 1 - Actions on structures - Part 1-4: General actions - Wind actions within Mandate M/515 of the European Commission to CEN, for the evolution of structural Eurocodes towards their Second Generation. Work of the Project Team started in August 2017 and ended in April 2020, with delivery of a final draft for public enquiry. The revised document contains several modifications with respect to the existing 2005 version, and new sections were added, covering aspect not dealt with in the previous version. It has a renovated structure, with a main text limited in size and containing only fundamental material; all the remaining information, either normative or informative is arranged into thirteen annexes. Common to other Eurocode Parts, general requests from CEN were those of reducing the number of Nationally Determined Parameters and of enhancing the ease of use. More specific requests were those of (a) the drafting of a European design wind map, (b) improving wind models, (c) reviewing force and pressure coefficients, (d) reviewing the procedures for evaluation of the dynamic response, as well as (e) making editorial improvements aimed at a more user friendly document. The author had the privilege to serve as Project Team member for the drafting of the new document, and this paper brings his personal view concerning some general aspects of wind code writing, and some more specific aspects about the particular document.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.293-309
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• 2022

Accurate design models for predicting the shear resistance of headed studs in solid concrete slabs are essential for obtaining economical and safe steel-concrete composite structures. In this study, symbolic regression with genetic programming (GPSR) was applied to experimental data to formulate new descriptive equations for predicting the shear resistance of studs in solid slabs using both normal and lightweight concrete. The obtained GPSR-based nominal resistance equations demonstrated good agreement with the test results. The equations indicate that the stud shear resistance is insensitive to the secant modulus of elasticity of concrete, which has been included in many international standards following the pioneering work of Ollgaard et al. In contrast, it increases when the stud height-to-diameter ratio increases, which is not reflected by the design models in the current international standards. The nominal resistance equations were subsequently refined for use in design from reliability analyses to ensure that the target reliability index required by the Eurocodes was achieved. Resistance factors for the developed equations were also determined following US design practice. The stud shear resistance predicted by the proposed models was compared with the predictions from 13 existing models. The accuracy of the developed models exceeds the accuracy of the existing equations. The proposed models produce predictions that can be used with confidence in design, while providing significantly higher stud resistances for certain combinations of variables than those computed with the existing equations given by many standards.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.463-484
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• 2015

Modern codes for earthquake resistant building design require consideration of the so-called accidental design eccentricity, to account for torsional response caused by several factors not explicitly considered in design. This provision requires that the mass centres in the building floor be moved a certain percentage of the building's dimension (usually 5%) along both the x and y axes and in both positive and negative directions. If one considers also the spatial combinations of the two component motion in a dynamic analysis of the building, the number of required analyses and combinations increases substantially, causing a corresponding work load increase for practicing structural engineers. Another shortcoming of this code provision is that its introduction has been based primarily on elastic results from investigations of oversimplified, hence questionable, one story building models. This problem is addressed in the present paper using four groups of eccentric braced steel buildings, designed in accordance with Eurocodes 3 (steel) and 8 (earthquake design), with and without accidental eccentricities considered. The results indicate that although accidental design eccentricities can lead to somewhat reduced inelastic response demands, the benefit is not significant from a practical point of view. This leads to suggestions that accidental design eccentricities should probably be abolished or perhaps replaced by a simpler and more effective design provision, at least for torsionally stiff buildings that constitute the vast majority of buildings encountered in practice.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-83
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• 2008

A rational and efficient seismic design methodology for irregular space steel frames using advanced methods of analysis in the framework of Eurocodes 8 and 3 is presented. This design methodology employs an advanced static or dynamic finite element method of analysis that takes into account geometrical and material non-linearities and member and frame imperfections. The inelastic static analysis (pushover) is employed with multimodal load along the height of the building combining the first few modes. The inelastic dynamic method in the time domain is employed with accelerograms taken from real earthquakes scaled so as to be compatible with the elastic design spectrum of Eurocode 8. The design procedure starts with assumed member sections, continues with the checking of the damage and ultimate limit states requirements, the serviceability requirements and ends with the adjustment of member sizes. Thus it can sufficiently capture the limit states of displacements, rotations, strength, stability and damage of the structure and its individual members so that separate member capacity checks through the interaction equations of Eurocode 3 or the usage of the conservative and crude q-factor suggested in Eurocode 8 are not required. Two numerical examples dealing with the seismic design of irregular space steel moment resisting frames are presented to illustrate the proposed method and demonstrate its advantages. The first considers a seven storey geometrically regular frame with in-plan eccentricities, while the second a six storey frame with a setback.