Practical design in structural concrete: American and European practice

In the past several decades, there has been considerable progress toward harmonising, if not unifying, practical design in structural concrete between American and European practice. This article attempts an assessment of these trends using the 1991 IABSE Stuttgart Colloquium Summarizing Statement as a framework for the assessment. Besides the well-known ACI Building Code, several notable North American bridge codes and an emerging ISO Simplified Design Standard are compared with the CEB-FIP (now fib) Model Codes and Eurocode developments. It is shown that European and American practices are gradually converging and important concepts are largely in harmony, although there are still many differences in details.