Probability-Based Load Criteria for

Structural Design
Structural codes and standards provide the foundation of good engineering practice and a framework for
addressing safety and serviceability issues in structural
design. They identify natural and man-made forces that
must be considered, define magnitudes of these forces
for design, and prescribe methods for determining
structural resistance to these forces. The framers of
these documents on which the structural engineer places
so much reliance must address the question: How safe
is safe enough? on behalf of society as a whole. Code
development is a grave responsibility and, for the most
part, has clearly been done well since failures of
constructed facilities are rare. On the other hand, such
failures, when they do occur, are highly visible and their
consequences are severe in human and economic terms
for all involved. This publication, Development of
a Probability-based Load Criterion for American
National Standard A58 [1], marked a major advance in
the approach to formulating such codes.
At the root of the structural safety problem is the
uncertain nature of the man-made and environmental
forces that act on structures, of material strengths, and
of structural analysis procedures that, even in this computer age, are no more than models of reality. The
natural consequence of uncertainty is risk. Structural
engineering, as applied to civil construction and in
contrast to other engineering fields, relies heavily on
analysis and computation rather than on testing because
of the scale and uniqueness of typical civil projects in
both public and private sectors. Structural codes are
linked to computational methods of safety assessment,
and their primary purpose is to manage risk and
maintain safety of buildings, bridges and other facilities
at socially acceptable levels.
Until the 1960s, the safety criteria in structural
codes were based on allowable stress principles. The
structural system being designed was analyzed under the
assumption that it behaved elastically (the fact that
structures seldom behave elastically to failure was disregarded). Uncertainties were addressed by requiring
that the computed stresses did not exceed a limiting
stress (at yielding, rupture, instability) divided by a
factor of safety. These factors of safety were selected
subjectively; one might, for example, identify the load
acting on a structure and then design the structure so

that the elastic stresses due to that load remain below

60 % of the stress at yield (implying a factor of safety
of 5/3). Of course, no one knew what the risk of failure
was for such a structure. The factor of safety of 5/3
simply represented a value judgment on the part of the
standard-writers, based on past experience. During the
past century, with the advent of formal structural
calculations, the trend in the factor of safety generally
has been downward.
This judgmental approach to safety works well as
long as the technology being dealt with is stable or
evolves slowly and there is opportunity to learn from
experience in the standard development process.
Occasionally, of course, engineers become overconfident, ignorance catches up, or construction practice
overreaches the state of the art; then failures occur.
More than in most other engineering disciplines, the
profession of structural engineering seems to have
progressed by learning from its mistakes. To the discomfort of many structural engineers, this learning
process usually takes place in the public arena.
During the late 1960s and 1970s, a number of natural
disasters occurred worldwide that caused extensive loss
of life and property damage and focused the attention of
the structural engineering community and the public on
the need to advance building practices for disaster
mitigation. Professional staff from the Structures Division in the Center for Building Technology (CBT) of the
National Bureau of Standards were involved in a number
of the damage surveys and failure investigations that
followed these disasters. Among the more notable of
these were the structural failure investigations that
followed the San Fernando, California, Earthquake of
1971, the Managua, Nicaragua, Earthquake of 1972,
and the Miyagi-ken-oki Earthquake of 1978; the investigation of snow and rain load conditions prior to the
collapse of the Hartford Civic Arena roof in 1978; and
the evaluations of wind loads, wind load effects, and
building performance following Hurricane Camille on
the Gulf Coast (1969) and Cyclone Tracy in Darwin,
Australia (1974). These and other investigations of
building performance revealed a number of deficiencies
in the provisions for structural safety appearing in the
codes of practice of the time, and emphasized the need
for improvements in design for natural hazards.

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Fig. 1. Collapse of the Psychiatric Unit of the Olive View Medical Hospital (San Fernando Earthquake of February 9, 1971).

Fig. 2. Collapse of the Hartford Civic Arena roof following a winter storm with snow and
freezing rain (January 18, 1978).

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Fig. 3. Damage to buildings due to hurricane winds (Hurricane Camille, August 17,
1969).

The late 1960s also witnessed the beginnings of the

move toward a new philosophy of structural design in
the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. The
shortcomings of allowable stress design were recognized in many quarters, and a search was underway for
more rational approaches to distinguish between various
conditions (termed limit states) that affect building performance, to ensure safety under rare but high-hazard
conditions, and to maintain function under day-to-day
conditions. Concurrently, the new field of structural
reliability was developing around the notion that many
of the uncertainties in loads and strengths could be
modeled probabilistically. Advances were being made in
first-order reliability analysis, stochastic load modeling
and supporting statistical databases. Several probabilistic code formats were suggested [2], including an early
version of Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD)
for steel buildings [5]. However, these early proposals
were relatively narrow in scope and dealt with single
construction technologies in isolation from one another.
With this lack of coordination, there was a risk that as
different standard-writing groups moved toward probability-based limit states design, each would develop load
requirements independently, and that these load requirements would be mutually incompatible in structural
engineering practice, where construction technologies
usually are mixed. Leaders of the profession agreed
that structural load requirements must be independent
of construction technology to facilitate design with
different construction materials.

At that time, the Secretariat for American National

Standard Committee A58 on Minimum Design Loads
for Buildings and Other Structures was administered in
the Structures Division of the Center for Building Technology. The antecedents at NBS for this standard dated
back to 1924, when the Building and Materials Division
published a report under the auspices of the Department
of Commerce Building Code Committee on Minimum
Live Loads. Research on probabilistic methods in structural codes was a central thrust in the CBT throughout
the 1970s, with the work of Bruce Ellingwood in probabilistic analysis of live and snow loads [3,7] and load
combinations for reinforced concrete design [4], and of
Simiu and Marshall in wind loads [6]. This work stood
at the intersection of research and practice, and its
products were internationally recognized in both
research and professional communities. Various
standard-writing groups in the United States agreed that
the A58 Standard was the logical place for materialindependent load criteria to appear.
In 1978, Ellingwood accepted the challenge of
leading the development of a set of common probability-based load requirements for limit states design that
would be compatible with all common construction
technologies. He arranged for three other leaders in
reliability-based structural codes, T. V. Galambos,
J. G. MacGregor, and C. A. Cornell, to join him at
NBS during the summer of 1979 to develop a set
of load requirements using advanced structural reliability analysis methods and statistical databases. The

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objectives of this joint effort were to: (1) recommend a

set of load factors and load combinations for inclusion in
the A58 Standard that would be appropriate for all types
of building construction (e.g., structural steel, reinforced
and prestressed concrete, engineered wood, masonry,
cold-formed steel and aluminum); and (2) provide a
methodology for various material specification groups
to select resistance criteria consistent with the A58
load requirements and their own specific performance
objectives.
The product of this collaboration is NBS Special
Publication 577, Development of a Probability-based
Load Criterion for American National Standard A58
[1], which was published in June 1980. Subsequent
developmental work on probability-based codes in the
United States in such diverse applications as buildings,
bridges, offshore structures, navigation facilities, and
nuclear power plants in the intervening two decades can
all be traced back to this one seminal document.
The basic notions underlying the probability-based
load requirements and resistance criteria contained in
NBS Special Publication 577 are relatively simple.
Structural failure occurs if the resistance, R, is less than
the structural action, Q, due to the applied loads. If R
and Q are modeled as random variables, the limit state
(or failure) probability can be computed as the probability that R is less than Q [1]. Much of the early history
of structural reliability revolved around difficulties in
performing this computation. If a desired or target
limit state probability for design can be established
(by assessing historically acceptable designs, professional consensus, or legislative or regulatory fiat), then
structural design should strive to achieve solutions
yielding limit state probabilities close to that target
value. Design solutions with higher limit state probabilities are unacceptable from a safety point of view;
designs with lower probabilities are needlessly
expensive.
In probability-based limit states design, the structural
reliability formulation is presented in such a way as to
make it practical for design by engineers who may not
be familiar with reliability concepts or have access to
the necessary statistical data. Structural safety requires
that
Required strength < Design strength

exceed a target reliability, Eq. (1) can be restated for

practical design purposes as
i Qi < Rn

(2)

In this equation, R n is the nominal strength corresponding to the limit state of interest and Q i is the
nominal load. These strengths and loads traditionally
have been provided in codes and standards, and most
engineers are familiar with them. The factors and i
are resistance and load factors that reflect (1) uncertainty in strength and load, and (2) consequence of
failure, reflected in the target reliability measure. The
right hand side of Eq. (2) is the purview of each material
specification (steel, concrete, engineered wood, etc.).
The left-hand side is defined for all construction materials by American National Standard A58, Building Code
Requirements for Minimum Design Loads for Buildings
and Other Structures [8], the national load standard
referenced by the Model Codes and other regulatory
documents in the United States.
The probability-based load criteria in NBS Special
Publication 577 [1] were first implemented through the
voluntary consensus process in the 1982 edition of
American National Standard A58. They have appeared
in all editions of that Standard (the standard has been
published as American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) Standard 7 since 1985) since then, most
recently ASCE Standard 7-98, and have remained
essentially unchanged since 1982. They have been
adopted by reference in all standards and specifications
for limit states design in the United States, including the
American Institute of Steel Constructions LRFD
Specification for Steel Structures (1986, 1994 and 2000
editions), ASCE Standard 16-95 on LRFD for Engineered Wood Construction, and American Concrete
Institute Standard 318-96 (Appendix B). They also have
been adopted in the International Building Code 2000,
the new single model code in the United States. In
retrospect, the move toward probability-based limit
states design may seem like a small step, but in fact it
was not. It required a thorough re-examination of the
philosophical and technical underpinnings of the current
bases for structural design, as well as the development of
supporting statistical databases. Much of this supporting research is still utilized in code development and
improvement activities worldwide. It has become the
basis for structural design as it is now practiced by
professional engineers in the United States.
It is unlikely that these probability-based load
criteria efforts would have been completed and
implemented in professional practice successfully
had they been managed by any other than CBT/NBS.

(1)

where the required strength is determined from

structural analysis utilizing the specified design loads,
and the design strength is calculated from principles of
structural mechanics with specified material strengths
and structural element dimensions. With the performance requirement that the member reliability should

286

CBT was viewed as representing the structural engineering community at large rather than any one special
interest group. The load criteria were completed successfully because they were developed by engineering
researchers who were familiar, first of all, with the
structural engineering issues involved, as well as with
the reliability tools necessary for analyzing uncertainty
and safety.
In a more general sense, the load criteria that were
developed in this study and reported in NBS Special
Publication 577 have had a profound influence on structural codes used worldwide in design of buildings and
other structures. The approach takendeveloping supporting statistical databases, calibrating to existing
practice, and calculating load and resistance factors to
achieve desired reliability levelswas followed in a
subsequent National Cooperative Highway Research
Program study to develop limit states design procedures
for highway bridges, now published as an American
Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials standard. The National Building Code of
Canada will adopt a similar approach to combining
loads in its 2000 edition. Standard development
organizations in other countries, including Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and Western Europe
(through the Eurocodes) have adopted similar load
combination requirements for structural design. The
NBS Special Publication 577 load combinations have
been recognized internationally as the first developed
using modern probability-based load combination
analysis techniques. They have stood the test of time,
and only minor changes have been required as a result
of additional research and advances in other areas of
structural load modeling during the past two decades.
The probabilistic approach to structural safety
embodied in this groundbreaking activity continues to
resonate in the structural engineering community. The
aftermath of natural and man-made disasters during the
past two decades, rapid evolution of design and
construction methods, introduction of new technologies, and heightened expectations on the part of the
public, all have made judgmental approaches to
ensuring safety of the built environment increasingly
difficult to defend. The traditional practice of setting
safety factors and revising codes based solely on
experience does not work in this environment, where
such trial and error approaches to managing uncertainty
and safety may have unacceptable consequences. In an
era in which standards for public safety are set in an
increasingly public forum, more systematic and quantitative approaches to engineering for public safety are
essential. The probabilistic approach addresses this

need, and in the past two decades has been widely accepted worldwide as a new paradigm, for design of
new structures and evaluation of existing facilities. NBS
Special Publication 577 was the path-breaking study in
this area.
Bruce Ellingwood held the position of Research
Structural Engineer in the Structures Division of the
Center for Building Technology, NBS, at the time this
work was conducted. Ellingwood was responsible for
administering the Secretariat of the A58 Committee,
and provided the technical leadership for the load
combination development. He left NBS in 1986 to
accept an academic appointment at Johns Hopkins
University, where he chaired the Department of Civil
Engineering from 1990 to 1997. He currently holds the
Willard and Lillian Hackerman Chair in Civil Engineering, and continues to be actively involved in a number of
standard-writing activities. Theodore V. Galambos was
Professor at Washington University, and widely recognized as the father of LRFD for steel structures. He
accepted a position at the University of Minnesota in
1981, from which he retired in 1997. He maintains an
active schedule, particularly with the American Institute
of Steel Construction. Professor James G. MacGregor
recently retired from the University of Alberta, Canada.
He has been a leading figure in both the American
Concrete Institute and the Canadian Standards Association for three decades and continues his involvement
with concrete standards activities in Canada and the
United States. C. Allin Cornell was Professor at MIT,
and had proposed one of the early probability-based
structural codes in the late 1960s. In recent years as
Professor at Stanford University, his research and
consulting activities have involved risk analysis of
offshore structures and other critical facilities and
earthquake-resistant design of building structures.
A number of archival publications were prepared
from the NBS study. Most notably, references [9] and
[10] were awarded the American Society of Civil
Engineers Norman Medal in 1983. The Norman Medal
is the oldest and most prestigious of ASCEs prizes, and
is awarded annually to the paper(s) that the ASCE
Awards Committee and the Board of Directors judge
most significant and meritorious for the advancement of
the civil engineering profession. Reference [11] was an
invited contribution to the inaugural issue of the Journal
of Structural Safety, which in the intervening period has
become the leading international journal in the field of
structural reliability and integrated risk assessment.

Prepared by Bruce R. Ellingwood.

287

Bibliography

[6] Emil Simiu, Michael J. Changery, and James J. Filliben,

Extreme Wind Speeds at 129 Airport Stations, J. Struct. Div.,
ASCE 106, 809-817 (1980).
[7] Bruce Ellingwood, Wind and Snow Load Statistics for Probabilistic Design, J. Struct. Div., ASCE 107, 1345-1350 (1981).
[8]Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures ,
ANSI Standard A58/ASCE Standard 7.
[9] Theodore V. Galambos, Bruce Ellingwood, James G.
MacGregor, and C. Allin Cornell, Probability-Based Load
Criteria: Assessment of Current Design Practice, J. Struct. Eng.,
ASCE 108, 959-977 (1982).
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Criteria: Load Factors and Load Combinations, J. Struct. Eng.,
ASCE 108, 978-997 (1982).
[11] Bruce Ellingwood and Theodore V. Galambos, Probabilitybased Criteria for Structural Design, Struct. Saf. 1, 15-26 (1982).

[1] Bruce Ellingwood, Theodore V. Galambos, James G. MacGregor,

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