A history of the safety factors Alasdair N. Beal, （安全因素的历史Alasdair n .比尔）.pdf

The Structural Engineer 89 (20) 18 October 2011 A history of the safety factors Alasdair N. Beal, BSc, CEng, MICE, FIStructE Thomasons, Leeds Keywords: Saf ety f actors, History, Design, Iron, Steel, Concrete, Codes of practice, Appraising, Eurocodes Synopsis In the world of compu ter calculations, a saf ety f actor is a strange thing: loads and stresses are calculated to 0.01% precision - and then a ‘saf ety margin ’ of 50-100% is added to create thefi nal design. In the past, the saf ety f actor was usually a simp le number, included in the code permissible stresses f or convenience, but modern codes have comp lex systems of partial saf ety f actors. How much of this is science and how much is ‘black art ’? How have the values of saf ety f actors been decided and how have they changed over the ye ars? The history of how the existing saf ety f actors have evolved is impor tant background knowledgef or those involved in develop ing new codes of pra ctice. It is also impor tantf or engineers involved in appra ising existing structures. There are many issues to consider in such an app raisal [1] but if a change of use is p lanned, the engineer needs to understand the original design at an early stage and estimate whatf loor loadings it was designedf or. To do this, the engineer needs to know the p ermissible stresses and design saf ety f actors that were in use at the time of the original design. An assessment of all aspects of saf ety in structural design would be long and comp lex. For simp licity, this pap erf ocuses on the saf ety f actorsf or bending, tension and compr ession in steel and concrete, as these usually govern the sizes of members in design and quantify ing bending, tension or compr ession resistance of structural elements is usually the simp lest way to establish what loads it was originally designedf or. This pap er considers how UK building code