Steel and Composite Beam Design

Beams are structural members that mostly work in bending and shear as a result of transverse loading. Other terms such as girders, joists, purlins, stringers, girts and lintels are often used. The compression flange, which is attached to the web in the plane of the beam, may or may not be laterally braced, thus the buckling concepts of compression members apply to beams as well.

Composite action is developed when two load-carrying structural elements, such as a concrete floor slab and its supporting steel beams, are integrally connected and deflect as a single unit. The stiffness of a composite floor is substantially greater than that of a concrete floor and its supporting beams acting independently. In addition, a 20 to 30% savings in steel weight is often possible by taking full advantage of a composite system. Since the concrete slab exists anyway and the shear connectors are inexpensive and easy to install, it is structurally advisable to use composite construction whenever possible.

The program performs the design of a simply supported, either interior or border, steel or composite beam subjected to distributed and concentrated loads. Two cantilevers may be modeled. The program computes the maximum bending moment, shear force, and vertical deflection induced by the applied loads, and compares them against the beam strength. The program computes the number and spacing of the shear studs or connectors required to develop either partial or full composite action, as well as the required camber.

The program is based on the AISC ASD/LRFD methodology and calculates the shear and flexure strengths according to the AISC 360 Specifications (13th Ed. Manual). Either service or factored loads may be specified.

Input Data

The required input data consists of steel yield strength, member length, and lateral bracing. In addition, for composite beams it is required the slab thickness and beam spacing. as well as metal deck and shear studs information. You may specify a partial distributed load and up to six concentrated loads.

Example

As an example, consider a 30'-0" simply supported W18x35 composite beam subjected to a factored concentrated load of 7 kip, and 3 kip during construction, at midspan. The beam is laterally braced at 10 ft from the left support. Concrete slab is 5" thick on 2" metal deck. Beam spacing is 5'-0".

Output

The beam size is adequate since the design ratios for shear, steel flexure and composite flexure are 0.06, 0.73 and 0.26 respectively. The deflection ratio is 0.97. The program has a design option, which finds all the sections that pass the specified criteria in a sortable table, as shown.

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