national structural codes

[concreteok]

What hernansgz pointed out lately on the national codes really interest me, we have been in almost same situation here.

My country used to adopt (ya, we have a diffirent title but the content are 100% the same, for information of those very lucky engineers from bigger nations which have developed their own code) from british codes. And now of cos, british are moving to eurocodes and we are asked to do the same.

Like Argentina engineers, we too very frustated with the whole situation.

As an example, concrete code.

In our building by-law (supposed the only document gazzeted in law system), it still refers to CP110:1978.

Most of the engineers design to BS8110 whther 1985 version or the updated 1997 version. Some trying hard to pick up EC2 and our engineer society try to come out with our own National Annex which is also very similar to British NA to EC2. Along the way, happened all those debates (from graduates of foreign countries i presumed) should we continue to follow bristish, should we go to australian, american or new zealand, blabla?

On the other hand.

And can you believe it, my country actually adopted (this time not in full but with some modifications and a lot of mistakes) from australian for wind loads? and they tried too to form a seismic codes (ya, we have some bigger tremors nowadays) based on UBC and IBC (american)!!!

And now, wow! ISN'T A BIT TOO MUCH FOR US, the STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS?

[Agent66]

I practice in New Zealand and we are lucky enough to have all national standards with some shared with Australia, and they are still confusing and reference old obsolete standards all over the place!

Our codes are quite strong on seismic design, and in some areas differ quite markedly from overseas standards in the treatment of ductility and capacity design, so we are never going to be in a position to adopt other design standards.

I can imagine it must be 10 times worse in other countries where you have to adopt a lot of different standards, sometime where they are based on totally different premises and do not read together in a good manner.

For instance the american system of standards confuses the hell out of me, depending on which part of the country you are in you are often using completely different codes to someone in the next state.....

At least at the end of the day they all have the common goal of (hopefully) producing buildings which stand up!

[indian20002006]

according to Indian is codes rcc calculation which were done by working stress method are now done by limit state method.in limit state method is a bit more complex.it is based on the probability that the structure will not collapse