Correspondence on Gas Explosions in Buildings in the UK: Regulations and Risk by Dr. B.R. Ellis and

Site safety John Rolfe, from South Africa, addresses an aspect of safety: I refer to the cover picture of The Structural Engineer for 20 April 1999.

Due to their durability, aesthetic appeal and corrosion resistance, the use of stainless steels in construction is continuously increasing. Eurocode 3:Part l.4 covers the design of structural stainless steels and was issued in 1996. There is, however, a shortage of design guidance on the fire resistance of structural stainless steels, and this hinders the materials’ wider use in certain applications. Nancy Badoo

The aim of the paper is to improve the current shape limitation requirements of BS 5400: Part 3, which are known to be unduly conservative, especially when applied to assessment of existing structures. A practical method for finding the local critical stress for plate/stiffener combinations, without limitations on section slenderness, is presented. The critical component is identified for all possible buckling wavelengths, which can vary between the length of the stiffened plate and the wavelength of an encastre plate or stiffener, depending on the section geometry. For each possible wavelength, the critical stress c$ the critical component is found, when restrained by the other component, using an iterative method thut is easily programed for a desktop computer. Validation is provided by 75 finite element (FE) solutions. The results will be incorporated in a methodfor design or assessment. S.K.G. Chou, J.C. Chapman and P.C. Davidson