EN 1990 and EN 1991 – Practice Paper: Understanding Combinations of Actions

The purpose of structural analysis is to understand how a structure behaves under the various actions or loads which affect it. Understanding how these actions are combined is therefore fundamental to every analysis. There are significant differences in the way this is defined in the Eurocodes compared with BS5400, hence this may feel unfamiliar to many engineers. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how combinations of actions are applied in practice for bridges.