COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN OF INDUSTRIAL STEEL BUILDINGS

Abstract

Civil and Structural Engineering activites are the backbone of any economy, particularly in a developing economy such as that of India, where a major share of plan allocation is invested in these activities. Steel is one of the most popular materials used in structural applications, due to its high strength-to-weight and strength-to-cost ratio. Steel as a structural material finds applications in diverse areas such as industrial and commercial structures, bridges, towers and offshore structures. The M.E. dissertation work on the above mentioned topic is divided into following four parts : 1. Selection and display of the roof truss and preparation of pre-processor for analysis of roof truss. 2. Analysis of Roof truss. 3. Interactive design of Roof truss and calculation of final cost. 4. Interactive design of stepped column and its display. In the first part, an efficient program is written to facilitate the input of span of truss, material of roofing, number of panels, geometric properties of members, loading data, cost data etc. Graphical view of the truss selected is displayed for the user with complete dimensioning. (V) The second part uses the data readily available in the second part for analysis of the truss using program 'STAP'.The output of the second part mainly consist of displacement of the nodes and axial forces in members for various loading cases. By using outputs of the previous two parts, next part deals with design of compression and tension members for the worst load combinations and design of purlins. This program also checks for deflection. For design of roof truss IS : 800-1984 is strictly followed and Indian rolled steel angle sections are used. The last part designs the stepped column which is common feature of an Industrial steel building. Anderson and Woodward method for analysis is used. Commonly available ISMB sections are used for design. The cost analysis of various trusses is also done and their economy is decided,in a particular span range. The complete package has been written in FORTRAN-77 using 3.3 compiler. The packege could be run in IBM compatible machines (PC XT/AT's) with 8086, 80286, 80386 and 80486 microprocessor (with compatible numeric co-procegsor) and all currently popular graphic adapters. The software being written is reliable, portable and easy to use, modify and maintain.