New DAfStb Issues 630 and 631 supersede Issues 220 and 240

Issues (“Hefte”) 220 and 240 published by the German Committee for Structural Concrete (DAfStb) have been widely used in engineering practice ever since their first editions appeared. These guidelines proved to be valuable aids in both structural design and structural integrity verification. Issue 220 primarily provides guidance, tables and nomograms for ULS design (combined bending and axial load, shear, torsion) and verification of buckling safety. Issue 240 concentrates on guidance and recommendations for determining internal forces (for framed structures, slabs, deep beams), SLS verifications (such as deformation), and various detailed checks (such as splitting tensile or edge stresses occurring under partial-area loading). Initially, engineers primarily used the comprehensive set of nomograms for structural design purposes after adoption of the then new concrete construction standard (DIN 1045:1972). Over time, however, the contents of Issue 240 became increasingly popular. These old issues are still being used in structural engineering even more than 26 (Issue 240) and 38 years (Issue 220) after their last editions. However, their contents urgently required both alignment with current codes and standards (EC2) and incorporation of new findings and fields, such as fire design and numerical simulation. Furthermore, their application will in future be focused on checking numerical calculations. For this reason, several universities contributed to preparing completely new editions that take these changes into account and will be published as Issues 630 and 631 from 2018 to supersede the previous publications. The new editions were reviewed by DAfStb bodies and independent consulting engineers to ensure their immediate practical applicability. This paper presents an overview of the new issues and refers to their main contents, newly added parts and background information.