Hi All,
I have a basement slab supported by pile caps of various shapes. The slab is 250mm thick, while the pile caps are 1200mm thk.
I would like to stop RAM from designing the reinforcement for bending and shear in the thicker areas (i.e. in the pile caps) since I will deal with them using a specific strut and tie model.
I know that I can draw the design strips avoiding the pile caps, but since the geometry of the slab is very irregular, I would rater draw simpler strips that include the pile caps, and then ignore those areas in the automatic reinforcement design.
Is there a way to do this?
For example, can I cut-off the bending moment diagrams on the pile caps, since these areas are of no significance for me right now?
May these elements be treated as "stiff" and may the program avoid considering the stress in them?
Thank you very much in advance.
Cheers,
Orlando
Sure, just trim the strips, e.g. to "slab rectangle" or set the inter cross section slope limit to zero. It's like the drop caps method noted here: https://communities.bentley.com/products/ram-staad/w/structural_analysis_and_design__wiki/4514/cross-section-trimming-tn
Thank you very much for your reply Seth.
I have already done this, and while the thickness of the pile caps is not considered, the high bending moments on top of the pile caps still contribute to the bending moments in the strips. Then, I end up with a lot of additional reinforcement that I actually don't need.
Can I avoid this?
I tried as well to put a very large amount of reinforcement in the pile caps, but I still get many additional bars in the slab.
This does not happen if I draw the strips "around" the pile caps, instead. In the following picture, it is shown what I mean by "drawing the strips around the pile caps", and since it is very tedious, I would like to avoid it.
Thanks,
If you mesh the slab to contain the drop caps, then the stiffness is clearly affected, and this may tend to attract higher moments which is realistic behavior in my opinion. If you don't want that to happen, then you should not model them at all.