Pile Cap Design Software
Pile Cap Design Software
(OP)
I am looking for a good pilecap design program and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations. I would prefer a program that uses a FEM solution to determine the pile cap forces, pile reactions, design the reinforcement, etc. Thank you in advance for your advice.






RE: Pile Cap Design Software
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
Especially whne I design high-rise building pile cap with lots of piles supporting the elevator core under lateral loads: the moment from the very edge piles to the face of wall above is very big and requires deep pile cap-say 8ft. But it just looks like too deep.
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
Does the SAFE check the deep shear per CRSI or conventional ACI shear? I know ACI shear is too conservative for the deep cap.
Also I know deep shear per CRSI has much better shear capacity; how about the moment? Do you use conventional beam concept or struct and tie for the moment check? Or which SAFE is using?
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
RE: Pile Cap Design Software
You might want to check out the RISAFoundation program. Or, download the free demo from our website:
https://risa.com/p_risafoundation.html
I don't want to go into too many details here. But, if you want FEM or closed formed solution for pile capes, RISAFoundation will do both. Essentially, it has a library of predefined pile caps based on the layouts from the CRSI manual on pile caps. The design of these pile caps will be per standard closed form design procedures. However, if you have layouts that don't match you can create them as pile supported mat slab foundations which are analyzed based on an FEM solution.
Therefore, you have the opportunity create the pile cap using both methods to validate the accuracy of each method against the other.
I'm certainly not criticizing SAFE or Concept, but my belief is that most people will find RISAFoundation easier to use.