Foundation-Plate Mat Support versus Plate Pin Supports

I have been designing an RHS with a base plate and gusset stiffeners. I've used master-slave command for the location of my loads and used Plate Mat Support as supports. The error was always "ERROR IN SUPPORT INPUT OR THERE IS NO SUPPORT INPUT. ANALYSIS WILL NOT BE PERFORMED. DATA-CHECK MODE ENTERED." even though the support command is clearly present in STAAD Command Editor, and acccordingly arranged with SLAVE command. What must be the error and solution for this?

Alternatively, I used plain pin supports located at every node of the plate of my model base plate. No error was found with this said model. How reliable is this compared to using Plate Mat Support? Thank you in advance!

Note: I'll post my model files after the shift. Local network has been locked for now. 

Parents Reply
  • Hello,

    This is a very hard question to answer as there is no specific rule for that. You can use this method as well but the question here will be the value of modulus subgrade. Instead of that you can use some spring support too but gain the value of spring constant you need to find out. 

    A method could be using P/X as spring constant where, P is the maximum allowable load and Z is the allowable deflection of that supporting beam. But this will be subjected to some kind of R&D and you may study some paper if available to get better modelling methods.

    Thanks & Regards,
    Abhisek Mandal
    Global Technical Support

    Answer Verified By: Lake Osnaznara 

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