A Brief Review of Structural Aspects of IS 16700:2017

Abstract

Rapidly increasing urbanisation and subsequently ascending shortage of land in the urban areas has pushed the design engineers to switch to the utilisation of the vertical spaces in the form of high-rise buildings and reduce the horizontally vast design popular in the previous era. However, this step not only enhances the criticality of the design processes but also increases our dependency on design codes. Talking specifically about India, the dependency of Indian design community was majorly on international codes due to the non-availability of a design code for tall buildings. It also gave rise to a wide gap in the design community about different provisions. However, recently Bureau of Indian Standards has launched First Tall Building Code of India, IS 16700:2017 “Criteria of Structural Safety of Tall Concrete Buildings.” Despite a good effort of bringing the Indian design community at the same base scale, this code still lacks in a clear depiction of certain aspects. It is also felt that commentary of this code may be provided in a similar fashion as of ASCE 07:2016, ACI 318:2014 to facilitate the adoption of the code. As a first step to it, this study is mainly aimed towards understanding some of the critical structural aspects of the code so as to develop a better understanding in practitioners and design engineers about it. Moreover, some critical clauses are also highlighted through a comparison of the same with various existing international standards.