Vulnerability of Buildings in Malta to Earthquake, Volcano and Tsunami Hazard

CO2 and sustainable development Andy Beeton has written from Agnon in France: First, I really think that Verulam ought to have his own e-mail address by now! (He has: see end of column!)

It is fascinating returning to an area you have visited some time ago. Will you recognise the terrain, the buildings, the people? It is the same with policies and procedures. Will they be the same or have they changed beyond recognition? In 1975, under the auspices of the Apex Trust - a charity concerned with the employment problems of ex-offenders - we were studying the problems of people in the white-collar field who had a criminal conviction. Would professional bodies resist their entry, would disgraced professional persons lose their livelihood, and so on? Nearly a quarter of a century later a return visit to the same area is an interesting experience. Keith Soothill

The aim of this 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 designing flat-bar-stiffened plating against local buckling, without limitations on section slenderness, is presented. Behavioural insight and validation is provided by 75 finite element (FE) solutions and by laboratory experiments. Strength curves for design are given, which are functions of the system critical stress, expressed as the critical slenderness parameters ep and es for the plate and for the stiffener. The system critical stress is found according to the method described in ref 1. The strength of the stiffened plate is then found by adding the plate strength to the stiffener strength. S.K.G. Chou, J.C. Chapman and P.C. Davidson