ASCE
ASCE 7
Published by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
asce.org · checked 2026-09-23
Citing it here is not conformity with it, and this site holds no copy of its text.
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What it governs
The loading standard the American building codes point at: how much wind, snow, rain, flood, earthquake and live load a structure is designed to resist, and how those loads are combined. It sets the demand, not the capacity.
What a member made of steel, concrete or timber can carry comes from that material's own standard; ASCE 7 says what it has to carry. Its loads are tied to a risk category — what happens if the building fails — so the same roof in the same town is designed for different loads depending on what is underneath it.
Wind and snow arrive as a mapped value for the site that is then modified for exposure, terrain, height and shape, and the modifiers frequently matter more than the map. A value read off a map and used unmodified is not a design load.
Load combinations are the part most often skipped: a member is checked against several combinations of the loads acting together, and the governing one is rarely the largest single load.
Obtained from American Society of Civil Engineers. What ASCE publishes
Editions
This site holds no edition list for ASCE 7, so a citation here names ASCE 7 rather than a year. The publisher above has the current designation.
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