Innovative design for optimized, compliant structures
With Consteel’s toolset at your disposal, each project becomes a journey of exploration and fulfillment, reigniting the excitement and fascination inherent in structural engineering.
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design features
Critical temperature calculation
The fire design process is an integrated part of the Consteel automated and efficient design process. Depending on the designed fire protection solution, the structure can be unprotected or protected, in the latter case, the fire protection can be passive (insulation) or reactive (intumescent painting). The calculation can be performed with material properties at elevated or at room temperature. In the case of elevated temperature analysis, the indirect effects of thermal expansion can also be considered separately. For reactive protection, the critical temperatures are calculated for any steel member.
Purlin design
Purlin design is always filled with questions. Consteel offers a comprehensive solution with its special purlin design mode: consideration of the restraining effect of the sheeting, the overlaps and complete, Eurocode-conform local and distorsional buckling design.
Since purlins can be modelled as integrated parts of the global structural model, the different stiffnesses of their supports (the frames) can be examined, as well as the purlins‘ stabilization effect on the frames.
Automatic buckling design based on the ‘General method’
General method is the smartest way of stability design, described in EN 1993-1-1. It is applicable for any complex cases of out-of-plane buckling problems (flexural, torsional, and lateral-torsional buckling, and any interactions of these) with arbitrary members, loading and support conditions. Based on the global buckling and sensitivity analysis, it provides a comprehensive and automatic solution for stability design.
Local and distorsional buckling design of parametric cold-formed profiles
In Consteel, numerous different cold-formed sections can be defined parametrically, including Z, C, U, Sigma, Zeta and hat sections with variations of edge, flange and web stiffeners. Complete design calculation is provided for all of them considering local buckling according to EN 1993-1-5 and distorsional buckling as per EN 1993-1-3 and interaction of those, fully automatically.
Design support for custom cold-formed profiles
Besides several parametrically defined cold-formed sections, custom profiles can also be created in Consteel. Profile definition includes not only drawing geometry but setting standard parameters too. Therefore complete design calculation is provided for custom cold-formed profiles considering local buckling according to EN 1993-1-5 and distorsional buckling as per EN 1993-1-3 and interaction of those, fully automatically.
Seismic design by user-defined multimodal analysis
In case of classic modal analysis it is a common problem that the mass partitipation is not enough, because there is no dominant shape but 2 or 3 dominants. In Consteel, it is possible to combine the few dominant shapes manually and run the analysis on the loads generated from that. The generated loads can be combined in a mechanically consistent way unlike the loads combined with CQC method where the signs/directions of the loads are lost and so the results will be consistent only on cross-section level but not on bar members. This consistency is of high importance in buckling analysis and connection design.
Standards
In Consteel, numerous National Annexes are avalilable for Eurocode-based design:
Hungarian, Dutch, Finnish, Singaporian, Portugese, Swedish, Austrian, Polish, German, Bulgarian, Greek, Cyprian, UK, Croatian, French, Danish.
Romanian, Spanish and Italian national standards are also avilable and AISC as well.
How can Consteel enhance your work?
Read how the world’s first solar tracker plant are built with the help of Consteel
In 2002, STI Norland built the world’s first plant with solar trackers in Navarra, Spain.
Take a look at the pioneering technologies used and developed by this company, as well as the implementation made in the Consteel software for the structural check process, which has allowed them to evaluate the high stresses to which a solar panel support structure can be subjected..
The design processes of a multi-story industrial structure using a central parametric model
Discover an in-depth case study detailing the expansion of a Turda, Romania plasterboard factory, which shows how the expansion led to the construction of nine new structures.
This project, which uses a central parametric model, won third place in this year’s The Steel Lion Award 2023 competiton, thanks to its innovative use of Consteel software for steel structural design and Pangolin, the Rhino-Grasshopper plugin for Consteel.
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