Appraisement of Historic Industrial Buildings Designed 1880-1940

Historic steel constructions are an important part of the industrial building stock. For appropriate maintenance and restoration of such historic buildings and evaluation of load-carrying capacity specific knowledge of historic constructions is required. This article presents the results of a research project dealing with historic steel structures, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The research work was carried out by the Institute of Steel Construction, TU Dortmund, in cooperation with the Institute of Historic Building Research and Conservation, ETH Zürich. In the completed research project the important facts, like mechanical properties of historic steel, particular design methods and construction characteristics, were examined and merged for industrial buildings built between 1880 and 1940. An integral investigation of all aspects was made by analysing the load-carrying capacity of a couple of exemplary historic roof structures according to current regulations. These investigations led to the result, that sufficient resistance of most links of lattice trusses could be proved also taking account of the reqierements of modern standards. Also, the analysis of still existing industrial halls showed that structures were in good condition. The result of the integral investigation was that maintenance and restoration of most historic steel structures could be promising due to good load bearing capacity.