COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN Et DRAFTING OF BEAMS AND COLUMNS ON PERSONAL COMPUTER

Abstract

It is a well known fact now, that a major portion of thi total engineers' time goes in the design and drafting (preparatiol and coordination of working drawings and specifications ) of structure. With the escalation of material costs and rapidly increasing construction costs, the design and drafting part must be executed in the shortest possible time. Most of the software packages developed in structural engineering are basically analysis oriented and contain very Limited design option. Moreover , little or no use at all is made of plotters which make the drafting part very economical. The present dissertatiOn work consists of the development of a software for the Design and Drafting of Reinforced Concrete Beams and Columns on Personal Computer confers to IS:456- 1978 requirements. The computer programs are written in C language and implemented on the TURBO C 1.5 Package. The drafting was done using TURBO C functions. A brief description of the program is given below Beam design program is quite general. It can design Rectangular (Simply supported Beam ) , T or L beam ( Continuous Beam ). For continuous beam , rectangular sections are designed at supports and T or L sections at mid span. The program does not have any option for analysis of the structure. So Moments and ( III ) Shears have to be fed at Working loads as Input data. Partial safety factor of 1.5 has been used throughout in this program. Then material properties and maximum allowable section of the beam is to be fed as Input data. All this data is . fed interactively. After inputting the data , program confirms from the user whether data is right or not. If the data is correct, then next data to be input comes into picture, otherwise the same input querry is repeated. Then, beam is designed and depth & areas of steel are calculated. The user selects interactively the bar size of the bars to be provided as Tension Steel or as Compression Steel. The Beam drafting program derives its input from the Beam design program and can draft any type of beam with its cross sections and longitudinal section. Detailing of the longitudinal section is standard ( i.e. half of the numbers' of bars are curtailed at a distance of L/5 from support leaving a minimum of two bars after 'curtailment ). Column design program is written for Axial load , Uniaxial Bending and Biaxial Bending. Column can be long or short. Section of the Column can be Rectagular or Circular. The column can be designed with bars equally distributed on two opposite faces only.Input data required for column design -is material properties , loads on the column and section of the column.Partial safety factor of 1.5 has'been used.Then this program calculates the area of steel requird and then bar size is selected interactively . The ( IV ) detailing of the section is done in accordance with the provision! of IS:456-1978. For Circular column , helical reinforcement is provided as transverse reinforcement and for Rectangular column lateral ties are provided .Output of the Design is fed as Input fo drafting of Column. The usage of this package will not only increase th( productivity of the designer and quality of work but also save him from repetitive and laborious work. V