AUTOMATED DESIGN OF STEEL BUILDINGS
AUTOMATED
MEMBER DESIGN
The AMECO
automated design process is produced by many design
decision routines, which were developed from years
of experience in engineering design and construction practice.
Thus the engineer can produce economical and practical
design solutions with nominal criteria input. At any
time the engineer can easily modify these decision routines
to suit his own requirements.
Critical
load combinations are formed for dead and live loads,
vehicle loads, wind and seismic forces, including second order
effects, construction simulation and out-of-plumb effects. A
typical member is redesigned 50 to 100 times.
Any change in member sizes restarts
structural analysis.
Detailed
material takeoff and construction costs are computed for all
members, based on AMECO current (or engineer input) unit prices
for structural steel, studs, fireproofing, concrete, reinforcing
steel and formwork.
Ameco
designs the following types of members:
- Beams with
rigid, semi-rigid or hinged connections
- Composite
beams: full or partial action, hollow or solid construction,
shored or unshored
- Trusses,
with rigid, semi-rigid or hinged member end connections
- Columns with
rigid, semi-rigid or hinged connections
- Steel joists
- Bracing in
vertical and horizontal planes
- Shear Walls
with pilasters
Performs fully automated least-cost member design:
- Determines
critical sections for each member for capacity and stress
checking
- Computes
effective length factors K for all members subject to compression,
for sway and no sway conditions
- Takes into
account second order effects in all member design
- Determines
unbraced length for top and bottom compression flanges of
beams; column flanges; top and bottom chords of trusses
- Checks and
designs beams, steel joists and trusses for specified deflections
- Selects doubler
plates at beam/column rigid joints if shear is exceeded
- Computes
shear studs for composite beams
- Designs beams
for specified vibration criteria
- Decrements
yield stress for thick plate profiles
- Provides
utilization ratio feature that allows the user to over-or-under
design a group of members by a desired ratio
- Designs shear
walls for horizontal and vertical loads and moments. Selects
reinforcing bars for shear, flexure and axial load
- Prestored
tables of steel shapes include: American and Canadian standard
rolled shapes and hollow structural shapes, pipes and welded
wide flange shapes.
