Bracing FreeSpan Glulam 1

[petertor]

Interior long-span glulam beam supported only at ends, and supporting a rolling swaying divider wall which bunches up at one end, ... what is the requirement for intermediate lateral bracing? There's nothing in APA or AITC that I can find, and it's limited by deflection, so is not anywhere near critical load, but there's nothing out in the middle for it to brace to except up to the roof, and any tie to the roof brings the immediate reverse-engineer permit review penalty of new roof loading, so that's not gonna happen! Cap the glulam with a horizontal 1-1/8 x12 microlam into a tee-beam? Not needed?

 

[JAE]

In the NDS, the maximum allowable flexural stress of wood members (GLB included) depends on the unbraced length of the beam. With no bracing, you simply have very low flexural stress capacity. With a movable partition, you also have lateral 5 psf requirement per code which will induce weak axis flexural bending in combination with the vertical bending. So you need to check the combined interaction of these two as well (fbx/Fbx effect added to the fby/Fby combo per NDS requirements).

 

[Lion06]

Don't forget the torsion, assuming the curtain is hung from the bottom of the beam.

 

[BAretired]

It looks like a situation where conservative design is appropriate. Depending on the span, you might want to choose a double beam with X-bracing top and bottom.

BA