Structural waterproofing must be designed to withstand the stresses acting immediately on it. These include, on the one hand, the permanent compression, composed of water pressure and ground pressure or soil pressure as the case may be, and on the other hand the cracking in the structures bearing on the structural waterproof. As the manner in which the reinforced concrete structures which carry the structural waterproof crack depends on their design: there is a connection between designing those reinforced concrete structures and the design of the structural waterproof.

When designing structural waterproofing, the behaviour must also be considered at pressures which are significantly greater than the limits stated in the rules. More extensive requirements of structural waterproofs in nuclear installations also result from the special load cases mentioned above. The stresses that these cause on structural waterproofs must be determined (cf. [92], Section 4.1.1 et seq.).

Design rules for structural waterproofs for bridging cracks are defined in [93]. They apply to stress cracks not more than 0.5 mm at their point of origin and opening gradually over long periods of time up to 5 mm. These design rules cannot be used for cracks several millimetres wide that open spontaneously or open and close rapidly due to the risk of the waterproof structure suffering fatigue cracks, even though tests on some waterproofing structures have proven that a structural waterproof is able to bridge such cracks to a limited extent (cf. [92] and Section 4.1.6).