The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Tension Membrane Committee has revised ASCE 55-10, the organization’s primary set of guidelines for designing a wide variety of tensioned fabric structures. The new updated standard, ASCE 55-16, will answer how to design a structure to meet codes and more. Unlike ACSE 55-10, the revised standard includes a special chapter on air-supported structures for the first time, making it a crucial resource for designer, engineers and fabricators of this structure type.
The working groups spent more than three years revising the standard with a main goal of bringing it up to date with current building codes and engineering principles, addressing a number of critical issues, such as
• the wide range of polymeric materials currently used in architectural structures
• how to test different materials
• better defining fabric-to-fabric, fabric-to-nonfabric and nonfabric connections to ensure performance •
and updating all fire specifications and standards to meet current codes, among other issues.