The research considers an important problem in structural safety. Failures during construction represent a significant number of total structural failures. Current treatment of construction loads tends to be ad-hoc. This research will be a necessary first step toward rationalizing selection of construction loads. A number of factors influence the safety of multistory concrete structures during construction. Among these factors are construction loads and their distribution on various levels of floors and shores. Several previous studies have addressed the problem of load distribution among various floors. However, determination of the magnitude of construction live loads has not received adequate attention. Slab formwork live loads include construction material storage loads, weight of equipment and workers, and impact loads when placing the concrete. The proposed research will develop probabilistic models for predicting formwork live loads. The developed models will be used to determine equivalent uniformly distributed loads for design of various formwork memebers. This study is based on the premise that the assurance of formwork design safety has to be based on a measure of risk in terms of probability. Accordingly, the objective of the study is development of probability based loading criteria for concrete formwork. The results of the proposed research will provide the required load model for evaluation of the reliability of current concrete building construction practices. This is an important step in extablishing an acceptable level of risk for the construction stage of concrete structures and future development of probability based design criteria for concrete construction.
