Safety Assessment of Eurocode 3 Stability Design Rules for Prismatic Members in Bending and Compression

This paper presents the safety assessment of Eurocode 3—part 1-1 (Eurocode in EN 1993-1-1, Eurocode 3: design of steel structures—part 1-1: general rules and rules for buildings, CEN, Brussels, 2005) rules for hot-rolled members with I and H cross-sections loaded in bending and compression. The safety assessment follows the recommendations of Annex D of EN 1990 (Eurocode in EN 1990, Eurocode—basis of structural design, CEN, Brussels, 2002). It is based on a large number (11,345) of numerical simulations (GMNIA) covering various relevant parameters. The assessment aimed at the justification of the partial factors to be used in the design of members under bending and compression as part of the ongoing process of revision of Eurocode 3—part 1-1. For that, it covered the application of the interaction factors given in Annex B/Method 2 of the current version of Eurocode 3—part 1-1 which will be the only method in the future version of Eurocode 3. In addition, the interaction factors were applied with the new buckling curves for lateral-torsional buckling, as they will appear in the new version. The assessment showed consistent results across the subsets considered with low variability and partial factors generally lower than 1.0. Finally, the γ_M* values are compared for flexural buckling of columns, lateral-torsional buckling of beams with the results obtained for beam-columns considering f_y, cross-section geometry and E as random variables, using the same statistical characterization of the random variables. It is observed that the partial factors obtained beam-columns are lower than those obtained for columns and beams. In conclusion, based on combination of the results obtained it was possible to recommend a global value of γ_M1 = 1.0.