A comparative study on wind loads between design standards for the design of pipe-rack structures

Abstract

Industrial plants currently account for approximately 70 percent of overseas construction but still require design knowledge when evaluating the economic profit in the field of plant engineering. Most engineering and construction companies remain focused on the construction of plant structures and have a lack of knowledge on the differences between the design of structural members according to design standards. Among international design standards, the US and Euro codes are most widely used for the design of plant structures in the world. In particular, the size of plant structural members is mainly dependent on lateral loads. Therefore, two international design standards, the US and Euro codes, and one local design standard, the Korean code, were selected to evaluate the magnitude and the distribution of design wind load for three real plant pipe-rack structures. The US code exhibited about 15% and 25% smaller design wind load than the Korean and Euro codes, respectively. This paper also discusses the stress statuses and the strength ratios required for the design of structural members. Axial and bending stresses were found to be the smallest in the US code. The required strength was smallest in the Korean code because of the lower of wind load factor.