Code check for the Philippines

Status: not available yet. sazeh does not check a building against the codes of the Philippines today. It applies one other national set of codes, so a model checked here is not checked against NSCP 2015. This page exists so that engineers working in the Philippines can ask for them: a country is added when enough of them do.

The codes that govern

What makes it different

The seismic chapter of the NSCP 2015 is written in the format of the 1997 Uniform Building Code, not in the format of ASCE 7. It works from a seismic zone factor Z (zone 4 for most of the country), a soil profile type and, near a fault, the near-source factors Na and Nv. It therefore needs its own seismic module, and cannot be built as a small change to an ASCE 7 check. The concrete and steel chapters are the easier part.

What a check would cover

• Base shear from the zone factor, the soil profile, the near-source factors and the structural system.
• The story drift limit, the irregularity checks and the load combinations.
• Concrete and steel members under the chapters that follow ACI 318-14 and AISC 360-10.

Before this country can be added

The printed NSCP 2015 is the source of every table, and the results would be compared with a design run in ETABS under the same code. Engineers who send real Philippine models make that possible.

What is seismic zone 4 in the Philippines?

The NSCP 2015 divides the country into two seismic zones, zone 2 and zone 4, with zone factors Z of 0.20 and 0.40. Most of the country, including Metro Manila, is in zone 4, and a few areas, such as Palawan, are in zone 2. The zone factor is the first input to the base shear. Read the zone of a site from the map of the printed code.

What are the near-source factors in the NSCP?

In zone 4, a site close to a mapped active fault has its base shear increased by the near-source factors Na (for the short-period range) and Nv (for the one-second range). They depend on the type of the fault and on the distance to it, and their values are in the tables of the code. They belong to the format of the 1997 Uniform Building Code, which is why an ASCE 7 check cannot be reused for the NSCP seismic chapter.

How is the base shear found in the NSCP 2015?

It is found from the zone factor, the soil profile type, the seismic coefficients Ca and Cv, the importance factor, the response modification factor R, the period of the structure and its seismic weight, with a maximum and a minimum value. In zone 4 there is a further minimum that uses Nv. Take the equations from the printed code.

Is there an NSCP 2015 checker for ETABS?

Not here yet. sazeh does not check a model against the NSCP 2015 today. Use the form below to ask for it.

What sazeh does today

It analyses an ETABS model from its .e2k file and checks every member, joint and storey against one national set of codes, then returns a calculation sheet and a corrected model. The ETABS model check tool page says what is read and what is checked, and the limitations page says what is not verified.

Other countries

• All countries