I am designing a pier for a two span steel plate girder bridge. The two abutments have expansion bearings and the pier has a fix bearing. The typical design approach when computing the transverse component of wind (i.e. wind acting perpendicular to the centerline of the bridge) would be to assume the wind force taken by the pier is based upon a tributary length equal to one half of the first span length plus one half of the second span length. Additionally, the first abutment is assumed to take the transverse wind force based upon a tributary length of one half of the first span length, and the second abutment is assumed to take the wind force based upon a tributary length of one half of the second span length. For the longitudinal component of the wind load, the two abutments are assumed to not take any of the wind force, and the pier is assumed to take all of the wind force (i.e. therefore a tributary length equal to both spans added together).
For wind on live load, Leap only allows you to enter one value for the tributary length of the wind on live load, which is applied to both the transverse and longitudinal components of wind on live. For wind on superstructure, Leap automatically assumes the tributary length for the wind load acting on the pier to be equal to one half of the first span length plus one half of the second span length, and this tributary length is applied to both the transverse and longitudinal components of wind.
Are there any plans in future Leap updates to allow two separate tributary length values to be entered for wind and also two separate values for wind on live load? (i.e. one tributary length for the transverse component of the load and a second value for longitudinal component).
The workaround solution is to manually input the values .
I shall forward your request to the development team so that this feature can be added in the future release.