Updating Eurocode 5 - Design guidance for increasing the robustness of timber structures

The European structural timber design standard EN 1995-1-1 Eurocode 5 is currently under an extensive revision and the latest draft includes a new Informative Annex on Additional guidance for increasing the robustness of timber structures. The design rules in this new Annex are focused on direct design methods that provide explicit verifications for specific scenarios of assumed local failure: i) design for resistance to removal of load carrying elements and; ii) design for segmentation using fuse elements. Dynamic effects related to a sudden loss of a load-carrying element are considered through dynamic amplification factors, which are provisionally prescribed as dyn = 2.0. The design of fuse
elements is based on limiting their load-carrying capacity, ensuring that they fail under certain damage scenarios. The upper values of the load-carrying capacity of connections are very dependent on the specific type of connection, but a
over-strength factor 4 = Rk,0.95/Rk,0.05 is provisionally prescribed.