Steel connection design advice, sway frame

[nivoo_boss]

Hi everyone!

Perhaps you have some helpful suggestions. I'm designing a facility that has some wheat silos on top of sway frames. The frames itself are about 7 m tall and span 5 m, but the loads from the silos are really large. In my calculation model all the joints are currently hinged. Below the first screenshot is from my calculation model with design normal forces (red is compression, blue tension). The second screenshot is from a Tekla model of an adjacent existing factory that has pretty much exactly the same sized silos sitting on top of it and the joints were designed as in the screenshot. What do you think - is the existing solution good?

 

[bones206]

I think pinned joint assumptions are appropriate for the braces, if that is your question.

 

[HDStructural]

I agree with bones206

 

[canwesteng]

Feel free to model them fixed and see what happens. I think you'll find it doesn't make much difference in the end anyway. Pinned would be the conventional way to do it and is how the detailer will expect to design the connections.

 

[nivoo_boss]

I was not asking about this. I was just looking for some ideas on how to detail these connections.