Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
(OP)
Hallo community,
Being involved in calculations and drawings mainly I become curious how some of the member properties were chosen by the senior engineers before starting desing calculations.
I am looking for a guide that contains recommendations how to pick initial member dimensions in the stage before starting calculations. What I mean is, in university we were given some hints regarding slabs, beams, columns (RC, Steel), e.g 'the height of a .... loaded ... is recommended to be 1/... of the distance between supports'.
Another thing that I would like to find information about is whether there is some practical guideline regarding members resisting shear (braces?, shear walls) like 'recommended seismic-resisting geometry properties of the building'. I see this being useful for discussing with the architect the need of adding/removing such elements in the early stage of the project, before calculations are made.
Many thanks for your time
Mike
Being involved in calculations and drawings mainly I become curious how some of the member properties were chosen by the senior engineers before starting desing calculations.
I am looking for a guide that contains recommendations how to pick initial member dimensions in the stage before starting calculations. What I mean is, in university we were given some hints regarding slabs, beams, columns (RC, Steel), e.g 'the height of a .... loaded ... is recommended to be 1/... of the distance between supports'.
Another thing that I would like to find information about is whether there is some practical guideline regarding members resisting shear (braces?, shear walls) like 'recommended seismic-resisting geometry properties of the building'. I see this being useful for discussing with the architect the need of adding/removing such elements in the early stage of the project, before calculations are made.
Many thanks for your time
Mike






RE: Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
Design by rule of thumb
thread507-29593: Design by rule of thumb
As for shear walls, the only building layout guidelines I am aware of are in the emperical design of masonry section of the code. You can also become familiar with the plan and vertical irregularities tables so that you know what to try to avoid.
RE: Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
Unfortunately that thread seems to contain too many rules of thumb and I could not easily filter the useful ones. But it is a good refresher to read after a hard work day ;)
In fact, although I am sure that my question sounds too vague it is a thing that is of real interest to me. Because I believe that the vigour with thich the experienced engineers I know maintain the mysticism of the preliminary design is obsolete. I also believe that the more people are able to do these basic checks, the earlier the error detection, hence a lower cost to fix the mistake.
Mike
RE: Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
RE: Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
RE: Member dimensions initial choice - recommendations
hokie66: There are some who would explain in short, but they rarely have the time to.
wikidcool: Good points. They even go a little beyond what I was asking, but they need to be considered too.
I searched around and came up with a book called 'Simplified Design of Building Structures' (Parker/Ambrose Series of Simplified Design Guides). Do you have some impressions regarding this book? Or maybe some of it counterparts regarding specific structure types - concrete/steel/wood.
Mike