Barrier for buildings: analysis of mechanical resistance requirements

Barriers (guardrails and balustrades) prevents people from falling, for example, from balcony, open windows and stairs. Barriers also retain, stop or guide person in buildings. To increase the transparency of these components, traditional materials such as bricks, wood and metal are being replaced by glass or an organic material, which has mechanical behavior different from traditional materials. Regulation usually specify some action to take into account in the design of barriers, but do not define the required resistance. There are no international standards (ISO or EN) to assess the fitness for use of barriers, only national standards, with different testing loading conditions and mechanical resistance requirements. In this paper is presented a comparison of requirements and experimental testing conditions specified in standards from Portugal, Spain, France, UK, USA and Brazil. The goal of this research is to find some equivalence between standards, regarding the mechanical resistance behavior of different materials (brittle/ductile materials) and set a worst case scenario as the basis for the guardrails mechanical resistance profile. Some relations between the service limits state (plasticity) of metal guardrails and maximum deflection are proposed.