Enter (or choose) your name in the Your Name field above.
Then, describe your design inspirations and big feature ideas using text , images, web links, movies... Whatever media works best to express your ideas!
- your overall strategy and the features of the structural system
For my overall strategy of building design, I’m considering minimize the beam spans to make the beam deflection as small as possible to keep the building safe. The following is showing the girds I added for the building features. In the atrium area, I’m avoiding any conflict with any beam or girder system to maximize the view inside the building.
For the column design, I was trying to think adding walls to cover the columns, but there is a problem. If buckling exists, we can’t see enough warnings through the columns since they’re covered by walls. But column covering walls can effectively protect the column from erosion, which is another trade off we need to consider about.
- the material and framing system selected
Beams and columns: steel
Footing: concrete
The materials I selected for different elements are shown below. Since I was trying to keep the beam span small, the W12x26 steel beam should be working well. Also, I considered some z-direction offsets towards those beam and girder systems for avoiding conflicts during construction.
What’s more, I’m trying to keep the beam spans small in order to avoiding the unnecessary truss system.
The average beam span is 7ft, which is not a very long span, but it can reduce the deflection effectively and to make sure we can get enough warnings.
- the locations of structural columns and major framing elements
For the columns, I was considering to use some bigger size since my building is an exhibition center, which means the area loading maybe greater than normal buildings. I selected W14x43 as my columns. As for the location of the columns, I just put them in the grid intersections and also tried to avoid any intersect to the atrium. Another important thing I want to mention is, I set -6ft offset under the ground to place my building to resist possible wind load and overturning.
Under 6ft below the ground level, I set 72”x48”x18” regular footings to hold the whole building. Since the footing size is relatively big, it should have a good performance towards building settlement. Also, the soil type is another important factor.
Column Shape: W14x43
Beam Shapes: W12x26
Average Beam Span: 7ft
Foundation Offset: -6ft
Beam Floating below the roof or floor: 1 in, 0.5in respectively
Challenges: cost, mechanical properties,
Structural floor plan views:
Level1:
Level2:
Roof:
Footings under ground level
Beam, Girder and Column
- any special structural challenges
For the challenges, the most uncertainty should be the efficiency of the whole structural view. I’m wondering if I’m using too many small parts in the design processes. As talked before, the properties of footing settlement is still relative to the soil condition tightly, the mechanical properties of the whole steel frame structure is still not explored.
Also, I’m still wondering if I should add some cover walls for the beam system cuz I think my beam system exposes to much to the air and it’s not so good-looking.
What’s more, it’s very strange that there’s always a problem as shown below. My model looks good in Revit but once I upload it to the ACC folder, the stairs seem not correct.
