Study of the Service-life Factor and its Effects on Safety and Economic Considerations in Building Design

In the current engineering practices, buildings are commonly designed for an effective lifetime of 50 years. This lifetime can increase the cost of buildings with short lifetimes and can reduce the safety level of buildings with large lifetimes. In this paper, a “service-life factor” has been defined. Applying this factor into the nominal values of live, earthquake, wind, and snow loads, the effect of service-lifetime is taken into consideration. The study shows that the magnitude of seismic load can be reduced by 60% and those of other periodic loads by 30% for temporary buildings. An increase of 50% in the periodic loads was also observed for service-lifetime of 150– 200 years. These effects indicate a meaningful improvement in economy and safety of buildings if the service-life factor is considered