Have you ever heard about the ‘General Method’? This is an alternative design method to consider the interaction of axial compression with major-axis bending for general buckling situations, where the main interaction formulas are not applicable.
This basically includes every member with monosymmetric or asymmetric cross-sections or with cross-sections not uniform along the length (welded tapered sections) or laterally stabilized by sheeting or anything else without providing full fork supports.
Did you know, that the General Method is fully supported by Consteel and provides an automated buckling verification possibility? Of course, for the use of the General Method in a general case the traditional 12DOF beam finite elements are not applicable. But the special 14DOF beam elements used by Consteel are perfectly compatible?
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Did you know that you can use Consteel to design a pre-engineered Metal Building with all its unique characteristics, including web-tapered welded members, the interaction of primary and secondary structural elements, flange braces, shear and rotational stabilization effect provided by wall and roof sheeting?
Download the example model and try it!
Download modelIf you haven’t tried Consteel yet, request a trial for free!
Try Consteel for free
Consteel offers a range of load combination filtering options, which can be applied based on limit states, load cases, and analysis and design results. By applying different series of filters, designers can streamline their workflow and reduce calculation time.
Filtering options
Filtering is realized through the Load combination set definition window.
Filtering by limit states and by load cases are handled together with the checkboxes under the Limit states and Load cases buttons.
The 3-state checkboxes affect each other as they are not only used for selection but also for indication of the content. They can be manually set only to checked or unchecked. The middle state only appears when other filters are applied.
Filtering by limit states or load cases does not require any calculation results.
Filter by rules, on the other hand,is based on the actual analysis and/or design results. Different types of rules can be applied one by one or at the same time to select the desired load combinations.
When a rule is applied, all the load combinations that are selected on the Load combination set definition dialog- either with filtering by limit states/load cases or checked in manually- are examined at every position the rule indicates. Load combinations that meet the rule’s criteria are selected (remain checked in), while those that do not, become unchecked.
- With analysis rules, load combinations can be selected based on deformations or internal forces at either every finite element node or only at the member ends. This last one is included specifically for connection design. Deformations are checked in SLS combinations, internal forces are checked in ULS combinations only.
- With buckling rules, those ULS load combinations can be selected which have the elastic critical load factor (first buckling eigenvalue) less than the given limit.
- With design rules, load combinations can be selected based on utility ratios checked in every finite element node of the chosen portion. Utilizations are available from several design checks: dominant results and detailed verifications for steel elements such as general elastic cross-section check, pure resistances, interactions and global stability. Only ULS combinations can be filtered with design rules.
Interaction of the different filter types
Filtering by limit states, load cases, and rules can be used together, with rules being applied only to load combinations that are checked in and have the necessary calculation results.
Let’s see an example.
It is a simple 2D frame model, with 27 load combinations of various limit states generated. Analysis and design results are calculated for all load combinations.
If applying design rule to select only those load combinations which result dominant utilization over 50%,
4 load combinations will be selected (Load combination set 1):
But if ULS Accidental limit state is turned off before applying the same 50% filter,
only one load combination is selected (see Load combination set 2).
Application of multiple rules
Applying multiple rules together results in the sum of the lists that would have been created separately.
gateCritical temperature calculation in Consteel
The calculation of the critical temperature is available in Consteel since the release of version 14. As an introduction of this feature, we prepared a video that gives some theoretical background on the topic, and demonstrates its usage in Consteel. It is shown how to prepare the model, how to execute the analysis and design, and how to create documentation about the critical temperature results.
Check out our user guide to learn more!
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