Serviceability is the ability of a structure to perform according to various requirements and expectations. For the user, the performance of the structure under service loads is of great importance. Structural engineers, however, have primarily focused on questions of safety and load carrying capacity.

Various engineering approaches to structural serviceability are presented and compared to the classical fail/safe concept applied to structural safety problems. 45 contributions address the following topics:

• performance requirements for structural serviceability
• design concepts and methods
• service loads and load models
• structural properties
• structural response to service actions.