System-Safety in the Application of Adaptive Load-Bearing Structures

Adaptive load-bearing structures are one possibility to reduce the consumption of building materials and the pollution caused by its production. Concerning the integrated mechatronic components, like actuators, control intelligence and sensors, it becomes a complex system. It was shown that the checking procedure described in the Eurocode leads to a structural safe design via ultimate limit state while material savings can be achieved, highlighted on an exemplary adaptive load-bearing structure. An overall safe design like on conventional buildings using the Eurocode is not possible anymore as the structural stability is hereby extremely influenced by an operating adaptation. Therefore, fault tree analysis and reliability block diagram as widespread methods in mechanical engineering were used for analyzing the exemplary adaptive load-bearing structure. In particular, control failures extremely affect the safety of the structure. Consequentially, a functional safety analysis considering IEC 61508 standard is recommended. Furthermore, measures for ensuring system-safety where proposed, such as fail-safe measures or redundant hardware concepts.