Practical code calibration procedures

The paper deals with a procedure that can be used by a design standards committee to determine safety indices for structures and calculate optimum performance factors for limit states design. Six load components are considered: dead, sustained live, transient live, snow, wind, and earthquake load effects. The procedure is based on an approximation of the probability distributions by normal distributions in the design point situated on the failure boundary. The objective in selection of performance factors is closeness to a target safety level expressed in terms of the target safety index. A computer program was developed to be used in calibration. The procedure is illustrated by examples.