RAM SS Concrete Column Slenderness

Allen Adams, our chief structural engineer, recently presented a webinar on slenderness requirements for concrete structures. If you are interested in watching a recording of this video (its free), click on the link below and filter "RAM" in the "Select Product" menu. The seminar was titled "Code Requirements for the Analysis of Concrete Structures."

http://pages.info.bentley.com/videos/

The web page covering concrete column slenderness in RAM Concrete will also be useful:

http://communities.bentley.com/products/structural/structural_analysis___design/w/structural_analysis_and_design__wiki/27705.ram-concrete-column-aci-slenderness-design

To answer your questions:

1. Yes, this provision was removed in ACI 318-08. However, it is still enforced when ACI 318-08 or ACI 318-11 is selected as the design code. This is a conservative defect. It is logged as Defect #215695 in our database.

2. ACI 318-08 and later permit the following to evaluate slenderness: moment magnification, elastic second-order, and non-linear second order. These are discussed on the ACI slenderness wiki above. RAM Concrete uses moment magnification for the design of gravity columns and uses an elastic second-order to design frame columns. The sway moment magnification procedure is not implemented in the program.

Thank you very much for your quick response. So basically as of now, RAM's only way of designing for column slenderness is utilizing the requirements from ACI 318-05, which in all cases is a conservative approach. I just want to make sure that if I design for the kl/r values and limits it notes, I will not be underdesigning for the current ACI code.

Are there any future plans to implement any of the three aforementioned slenderness analysis techniques into the program?

The ACI 318-05 slenderness provisions are very similar to those in ACI 318-11 and later. The section titled "Other Notes" on the ACI slenderness design wiki shared earlier will outline the omissions or defects that you should be aware when using the ACI design code for slenderness design in RAM Concrete.

Of the 3 slenderness methods, the program includes 2 of them: moment magnification and elastic second-order. The non-linear, second order analysis procedure is not implemented and there are no immediate plans to add it to the program. The implemented moment magnification procedure is for non-sway columns only. Sway columns should be modeled as frame members and analyzed using the P-Delta method in RAM Frame. Implementing the sway moment magnification procedure is a logged enhancement (see "Other Notes" section in wiki) and something we would like to add in the future.

Thank you so much for this information. I think I understand now how the program deals with slenderness. I do have another question. Based on the wiki link that you sent, there are four different type of columns. In the program, how would I specify a column as either "braced" or "sway" for gravity and lateral columns? I know how to specify a column as either gravity or lateral, and I know how to specify a column as braced, but what would I have to do to specify a column as sway? Is that an inherent characteristic once I have called out a column as lateral? I want to ensure that my lateral columns are sway columns and my gravity columns are braced.

Non-sway and sway correspond to the Sidesway assignments made in RAM Concrete Analysis - Criteria - Sidesway. See below. This global setting can be overridden on a column-by-column basis using  RAM Concrete Analysis - Assign - Columns - Sidesway.

Braced = Non-Sway and Unbraced = Sway