I'm analyzing some warehouse storage racks for a client to give them a load capacity. The problem is, my results keep showing that the capacity is far far FAR below what the rack company says they should be and far below what the client is putting on the shelves already. The rack manufacturer...
I'm trying to analyze a wood and steel bar roof truss built around 1870. Obviously A36 steel wasn't around then. I'm not even sure A9 steel existed. Does anyone have an idea of what kind of material properties you would use for this?
I'm designing a retaining wall made of those 2'x2'x6' concrete bin blocks. The client needs it to be 8' tall. You can see in my attached calculation below, I'm coming up with an overturning moment that's way higher than the resisting moment. I've been told by the block supplier and the...
I have a project where I'm checking some garage attic trusses that were modified by a contractor to fit in some stairs.
My question though is about the top chords of the trusses and their effective lengths. For out of plane buckling, is it correct to assume that the top chord is braced by the...
I am really frustrated trying to find an actual equation on the internet for flow into a circular downspout so I can make a real calculation of its capacity. Can anyone direct me to this information?
When I look up downspout size formula/calculator on google I get mickey mouse tables from...
I have a mezzanine with some existing steel joists that I measured up in the field. Depth, size of the angles of the top and bottom chord, diameter of the web bars...
How do I turn these dimensions into an actual joist designation so I can determine its capacity? The Vulcraft book is...
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but this type of thing has never come up in my work until now.
A client is putting up a new building, and on the third floor they are going to put two mixers. The mixer drawing gives me two loads, A static load of 20,000 lbs, and a dynamic load of...
Sorry if this has been asked already. What details do you guys use for moment connections? Specifically for beam to beam connections. I've been using the standard one from the AISC 9 manual like in Detail 1 of the attached sketch. For beams to columns, I really like welding end plates to the...
Has anyone ever heard of this before? I have a client who says that a contractor repaired her bowing basement walls with carbon fiber strips, and a few weeks later noticed cracking in the floor, and bulging in the center of the basement floor.
The footprint of the house is a rectangle, and the...
When you're designing a floor that has wood joists framing into other joists, do you consider the hangers transmitting moment? I have three 2x10 joists framing into a double 2x10 and it's failing in torsion when I consider the ends of the single joists as fixed, but it's obviously okay when I...
I have a client who wants to put a 1.5 inch decking on the bottom of some bar joists to be a ceiling for this one room in the building. He also wants the maintenance guys to be able to walk on it. I spaced the joists at 4' so the loading on the deck shouldn't be a problem, but I'm worried about...
I specified 1/4" E70XX fillet welds for a pipe rack, but the guys who did it only had a pressure piping spec for a full penetration groove weld that called for one pass with an E60XX then the top pass with an E70XX.
So these guys tried to apply that technique to the fillet weld and they mixed...
This is an interesting thing that happened when I was designing reinforcing for an existing C6x8.2.
I checked it in RAM Advanse for the torsion load of a new gangway they want to add to it, and it failed, spectacularly (d/c=12.6). So I thought to reinforce it with another C6x8.2 welded at the...
Hi, For a while, I just designed footers by hand, but now I'm working on a job at work on which some mat foundation design software would be nice.
My question is what is the most intuitive, best software out there that's easy to use, but still is robust enough to help me design mat foundations...
Hi, I looked at this masonry garage yesterday and the back door was way out of square. Looking at the garage floor, one side has settled approximately 3/4". The pavement outside the door is the same. Looking at the masonry above the door, I saw two parallel diagonal cracks, which looked to...
I have a question. My structural software is giving me answers that don't seem to make sense. I'm trying to add a W section to the bottom of some existing W16x40's to reinforce them for a mill that's in the room above.
Now I first tried adding a WT, and a little WT6x13 worked. But the...
Hi, I just looked at an interesting problem and I have a theory, but it has me kinda confused.
This guy's slab-on-grade ranch house has a problem where the ceilings are separating from the tops of the walls (see the attached picture). There are also numerous diagonal cracks at just about every...
Hey, I looked at an out-building and a garage for a client yesterday, and came across what's in the attached photo. This is an exterior wall for an attached garage with a bedroom above. It appears that the sill plate is twisted downward towards the middle and the concrete blocks supporting the...
Hey, this may seem like a dumb question.
I'm designing new mezzanines to go in this high bay at a factory and am checking the columns on my RAM Advanse structural software. They're failing. I told the client this and he said check the calcs from the engineer who worked here before me, who added...
A client from a previous job approached me last week with a new project. He has a firefighter training structure that he wants to sell plans for online and would like me to draw up the plans. He suggested that perhaps we could be partners in the endeavor as opposed to the usual model of me...
