Vamvatsikos D. (2023). Industrial structure design at the edge of the code: A true story of three little pigs. Proceedings of the 10th Hellenic National Conference on Steel Structures, Athens, Greece. (in greek)
Vamvatsikos D. (2023). Industrial structure design at the edge of the code: A true story of three little pigs. Proceedings of the 10th Hellenic National Conference on Steel Structures, Athens, Greece. (in greek)
Abstract |Three little pigs designed three low-ductility industrial buildings for agricultural usage. Two collapsed under a known extreme hazard. Fortunately, there was no loss of life, but two structures and two livelihoods were destroyed. Was the subpar straw and wood material to blame? Were the designers to be held accountable? History seems to have concluded thus. On the contrary, our recent investigations conclusively show that it was only a case of honest and well-meaning engineers, who were betrayed by an honest and well-meaning design code. They were misled to place their trust on a thought-up q-factor of 1.5 to 2.0 for industrial structure design. This factor was introduced into the code without proper verification, and it could not provide an adequate safety margin for collapse of low-ductility systems under extreme loads. Two, admittedly swine, engineers were framed by the powers that be. Follow us on the journey to uncover one of the greatest misdeeds of history that is still being taught to our children.
