Your Design Journal entries this week should highlight your design thinking that influenced your decisions about:
For my building, I decided to use widely spaced 8x8 hollow steel columns on the edges of my building spanned by steel 12x26 I beams to avoid central columns that would interrupt my large open spaces. I also chose to use radially oriented beams to better align with the semicircular shape of the building.
One challenging area that I have in this building is the breezeway passing through the first floor; I didn’t want columns to interrupt the passageway and decided to reinforce the second story floor with an X pattern of beams to help better support the upper floors. To help support the entire building and hold back the dirt on the underground level, I opted to swap from EIFS on metal stud walls to 12” thick concrete foundation walls for the basement.
For the floors, I went with 3” concrete on a metal deck for its strength to help support the large, floating span in my building and for its good thermal insulation properties between floors.
- your overall strategy and the features of the structural system
- the material and framing system selected
- the locations of structural columns and major framing elements
- any special structural challenges
add coping between beams/columns, beams/beams