RISA Foundation - Multiple Columns on a Single Pedestal

[waytsh]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle multiple columns on a single pedestal. Right now I am either making a smaller pedestal for each column or transferring the second column loads into the first column and adding secondary moments for the eccentricity.

With the first method punching shears would not be calculated correctly but the second is a lot of work with all the basic load cases I have on this project. Thoughts? Is there a better way to handle this?

 

[JoshPlumSE]

If punching shear is an important consideration then my suggestion would be to convert the multiple loads into a single set of loads and moments at the center of the pedestal.

There are likely a number of paths that you could take to make this conversion easier. The ones that jump to mind immediately are the following:
1) If this is a 3D model where the reactions are coming from RISA-3D, then you could specify a single boundary condition at the center of the pedestal. Then use links to pick up the other support points. Thereby bringing all of those reactions over to the main support point.

2) If this is a stand-alone RISAFoundation model, then I'd put together a quick Excel spreadsheet to store the loads. Then use the typical spreadsheet formulas to convert all the loads over the the center of the main pedestal. Therefore, the work done on the one load category easily replicates over to all the categories. Then just copy and paste the final loads into RISAFoundation's spreadsheets.