Mechanical Safety and Survivability of Buildings and Building Structures under Different Loading Types and Impacts

Modern construction sites are characterized by rapid pace and complicated organization of work processes. One of the important problems of a construction site is the human safety. The paper contains a categorization of human hazards during construction activities and an analysis of main causes of accidents in buildings and at construction sites. Together with general definitions of safety the paper reviews some new research trends in the field of mechanical safety and structural survivability of buildings and structures under different loads and impacts, including regular and accidental types of loading. It is shown that up-dating of safety regulations should mean not only the clarification of new terminology adopted in building codes and regulations on structural safety, but also supplementation of the regulations with sufficiently justified and experimentally verified provisions that should regulate the safety of buildings and structures under design and beyond-design basis loads and actions.