Got the following situation for a metal building foundation pier and I'm struggling with the idea of having uplift when solving for soil bearing pressure. The forces shown are ASD and are from a seismic load combo. As you see, there is net uplift and a lateral bracing force at the top of the...
I'm re-designing the floor slab and beams for an upper level mezzanine for various exhibits in an aquarium, one being a snow leopard exhibit. Pictures show that those tend to have mini mountains, which I assume is just shotcrete over framing. This will likely be the heaviest exhibit in the area...
I was running my own calcs for a long ridge beam (30', 10ft of trib) and found that my roof dead weight was enough to nearly offset all the suction for components and cladding. The roof dead load is about 15psf normally and then you have the self weight of such a massive beam. This has me...
Not sure if anyone has heard about this, but in our neck of the woods a couple new homes slide down the hill. Anytime we do a meeting with our insurance agent, scenarios like this come to light where it may not necessarily be the structural engineer's fault, but if they were consulted at any...
I'm staring at our company's details, other engineer details/notes, and I'm seeing a consistent idea that bars should be lapped 40 times the bar diameter. But in staring at ACI for any development equations, tension or compression, I don't get that value. Any insight to this? I'm mainly trying...
Client wants us to engineer an elevated platform for a lazer tag arena. The floor will be W-shapes with steel decking and plywood sheathing on top and HSS columns supporting. The existing slab is 6" thick, unsure if it is reinforced. I'm trying to limit the number of columns used in the LFRS to...
Bit of an odd request, I'm looking for better understanding of what the industry considers to be a "principle" in structural engineering. What are the implied duties or qualifications that come with the title of "principle?" And how would these responsibilities differ from someone with a title...
Client informed us we were to design this suspended driveway for their fancy house. What you see here are the drawings provided by the fabricator. There will be 20 gauge corrugated steel with an 8" slab spanning between. The fabricator originally detailed all those connections to foundation...
BTW, I'm not looking for solutions or alternative ideas - simply asking if this logic checks out.
The height of the frame is around 45ft. It exceeds the 35ft limit for a multi-story steel frame for OMF. It would change the architectural look of the designer's ceiling to do a SMF all the way up...
We were asked to engineer a garbage enclosure and see if we could "halve the cost" from what a previous engineer did. This is a masonry structure, steel columns on the top, supporting a wood roof. One thing I want to verify is whether we could:
1) Justify it as a Risk Category 1 to reduce wind...
Our region is in process of adopting the ACI 318-19 code soon and I just wanted clarification on these changes. If I understand right, anything that does not normally have shear reinforcement (such as concrete walls (retaining or basement) in out-of-plane, one-way and two-way slabs, and plain...
In relation to steel HSS welded to a base plate resisting a moment, I've noticed that Risa Connection only considers the column wall opposite the point of rotation to be effective for the weld strength. I'm curious if anyone thinks we can consider the side wall welds as contributing in resisting...
Based on the concrete cover specified by code, can you have different covers for the exterior versus interior bars of a wall based on their different exposures? Or do they both have to have the same cover based on being part of the same "member" that is exposed to the elements or in contact with...
This may be the wrong thread for this, but one of our employees is giving a training on retaining wall keys tomorrow and put out this quiz. I have some grievances against the answers and am curious for other's thoughts on the matter. I feel like some of the answers are "it depends" scenarios...
The SDPWS does explicitly permit the aspect ratio for force transfer walls to consider the aspect ratio for doors, though there aren't many great methods of calculating the strap force in those segments. This also opens up a can of worms of whether for taller walls, we can effectively still only...
I notice that Simpson's Anchor Designer software that when you toggle an "infinite" amount of concrete in the direction of the load, they ignore shear concrete breakout in that direction. Hilti's Profis software does not do this. I have seen one thread on here from 2008 where they mention some...
We've seen a lot of helical pier foundations required by the geotechs lately and I'm getting ahead of how to properly design for them. Most common we see out here is designing the footing as a grade beam spanning between piles which are spaced anywhere between 8ft to 10ft. I saw this picture on...
I've seen some chatter that we can't use the directional increase for moment connections for HSS members on base plates, but the only provision I know of is in K4 of the specification, but the context of that section doesn't seem to be referring to base plates. I'm also wondering if that...
HVAC subcontractors drilled holes through the top of the glulam. The glulam has (3) 2x plies on top of it that may be cut for plumbing, but the guys cut 3" into the glulam. The glulam is 5-1/8" X 19-1/2" deep and is 23ft long. The beam only supports floor for a kitchen/great room and was...
I'm a bit confused on what the Steel Manual and the Specification are conveying about BTC-P4 welds.
Table 8-2 for BTC-P4 weld says that the base thickness for the metal may be "unlimited", yet the root face (land) is 1/8" min. Furthermore, the table says that the effective throat is S-1/8"...
