STEEL DESIGN

Typical Steel Framing

The first building I designed out of school was framed with standard steel framing. Standard steel framing consists of wide flange steel beams, steel columns of various types, and steel bar joists for roof and floor members. Metal decking is then placed over the joists and either the roof system applied or a thin concrete slab poured if it is a floor. The building below is a typical example of a framing plan. This is one of a series of structures I designed for Pier 1. This building is located in Lawrence, Kansas.
This building has two interior beam lines and beam lines on all four sides. The small cantilever on the east was achieved by cantilevering the beams out. The large cantilever on the south side was achieved by dropping the beam down and cantilevering the bar joists over it. Lateral loads are resisted by X-bracing in the corners. Metal studs were used as infill for the walls. This framing system was chosen for economic reasons; it was the least expensive.

A current project that has turned out to be interesting is the Freeman Health Systems office building in Joplin, Missouri. This three story building is a composite design in which I raised the girder beams to the top of the deck to eliminate coping the joist beams. This turned out to be somewhat controversial, so I placed strain gages in the slab and am currently writting a paper on it. Some cracking in the slabs that was not related to the beams occurred. This appears to be a result of the mix design and what was done to pump the concrete. This is a non-structural issue that I am also researching for a paper. The project turned out very successful and was a fast track project with a very short construction time.

Steel Analysis and Design

Since I was one of the first structural engineers to purchase advanced structural analysis software before it became readily available, I analyze and design structures for other engineering firms. One example of this would be the Dekhila Port Silo in Alexandria, Egypt. My client on this project was Lembeck Associates, Inc., Consulting Engineers, a firm that specializes in international material handling systems and pollution systems for
steel mills. This structure was designed and detailed using metric dimensions(SI). The frame shown is 54 meters(177 ft.+) in height and is designed for substantial loads.

Another interesting steel project was the Nucor Steel Mill in the Arkansas New Madrid Fault area. This steel structure was 165 feet by 144 feet in plan and 88 feet high. In addition to the building, I was asked to analyze and design a sixteen foot diameter cylinder that spanned over 165 feet with loads of over 5,000 pounds per lineal foot. This was outside the recommended design specifications of the AISC Code. Therefore, I designed it using a three dimensional finite element program and checked it by hand with Timoshenko's plate theory equations.

Other steel projects that fall into the unusual category, at least for a structural engineer who designs buildings, would be a longspan cable crane and an underwater dolphin for barge handling. A dolphin is a structure anchored into bedrock that allows you to hydrolically pull barges in off a body of water. The longspan cable crane included modeling the cable and pulleys, which are dynamic structures in addition to the three dimension truss which acts like a boom on a crane.

Typical Structural Drawings for a Steel Building

Below is a typical set of structural drawings for a simple steel framed building with masonry walls. This is a small retail building.

A typical Foundation Plan

A typical Roof Framing Plan

A typical Detail Sheet

Links to Professional Sites
Organization	Abbreviation/Link
American Institute of Steel Construction	AISC