Causes of Structural Failures with Steel Structures

摘要

This paper is based on the experience from investigating over 400 structural collapses, incidents and seriousrnstructural damage cases with steel structures which have occurred over the past four centuries. The causernof the failures is most often a gross human error rather than a combination of “normal” variations inrnparameters affecting the load-carrying capacity, as considered in normal design procedures and structuralrnreliability analyses. Human errors in execution are more prevalent as cause for the failures than errors inrnthe design process, and the construction phase appears particularly prone to human errors. For normalrnsteel structures with quasi-static (non-fatigue) loading, various structural instability phenomena have beenrnobserved to be the main collapse mode. An important observation is that welds are not as critical a cause ofrnstructural steel failures for statically loaded steel structures as implicitly understood in current regulationsrnand rules for design and execution criteria.