Technical Questions

ACI Committees, Membership, and Staff have answered common questions on a variety of concrete related topics.



Load factors used in the 1963 building code

Q. I am working on a 1965 concrete building and I would like to know if load factors were used in the 1963 ACI 318 building code. If they were, what were the load factors for dead and live loads?

 

A. The 1963 ACI 318 code included both working Stress Design and Ultimate Strength Design methods. If the structure you are looking at was designed using the Ultimate Strength Design Methods (part IV-B/Chapter 15 of 318-1963), the load factors were 1.5 Dead and 1.8 Live.

If you need copies of those codes, there are two ways to get them:

- We sell all of the historical codes (1908 through 2005) in a packaged bundle on a USB memory stick

- If you happen to subscribe to our ACI Collection Online, the historical codes are included with that package (you have to select “Historical” from the titles list in ACI Collection Search).

 

References: ACI 318 Historical ACI Building Code Requirements (1908-2005); ACI Collection OnlineACI CODE 562-21

Topics in Concrete: 318 Building Code; Repair of Concrete

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