How to define schemes of WIND and SNOW loads for equivalent frame model?

11 February 2017

This post describes the methodology of defining wind and snow load schemes for the equivalent frame modelling the reinforced concrete flat-slab structure. I focused on some problems and possible errors which could occur while designing a structure using the equivalent frame method.

What should you pay attention to while defining wind and snow loads for equivalent frame model?

While combining loads for a two-dimensional equivalent frame model, you should pay special attention to the point of load transmission from the wind. There are no load-bearing walls in a typical reinforced concrete flat-slab structure. Panel walls as external walls are exposed to direction action of wind. Therefore, knowing the area of panel walls between floors, loads should be transmitted directly onto the load-bearing structure, that is, external peripheral edges of floor slabs. For spatial model of the structure, we would deal with linear, peripheral loading expressed as [kN/m]. As the equivalent frame model is two dimensional, concentrated wind loads should be applied to its cantilevers. Such load values are determined by multiplying linear loads [kN/m] by the axial spacing between columns perpendicular to the direction of wind.

Example of defining schemes of WIND and SNOW loads for equivalent frame model

The video tutorial available below shows the methodology of defining schemes of wind and snow loads for the equivalent frame model. The method of its developing is presented in details (as the video tutorial) in my other post published in this blog. Wind and snow actions were defined according to Eurocodes [1, 2], For that purpose, I used the automatic generator of climatic loads in the Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis 2016 software. In this tutorial, you can see how to define the so-called wind envelope for members in the frame model to ensure the generator determines and applies correctly wind and snow loads.