A Joint Report prepared under the JRC - ECCS cooperation agreement for the evolution of Eurocode 3.

This joint ECCS-JRC report is part of a series of background documents in support to the implementation of Eurocode 3. It provides background information on the specific issue of plated steel structures addressed in EN 1993-1-5.

For the design of plated steel structures, the rules for shear lag effects and plate buckling that have been specified in EN 1993-1-5 may look novel for many practitioners who so far have been acquainted to traditional national rules. These rules draw their reliability and satisfactory applicability not so much from time-testing, but from systematic evaluations of test results to prove compliance with the European reliability requirements and from a certain amount of worked examples and more and more emerging successful practical applications.

This commentary is meant to provide the following:

- The background of the rules,

- Their reliability basis,

- Explanations on how they are meant to be used,

- Some key examples.