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Tutorial #4 Design of simply supported floor beams
Simply supported beams which support the weight of floors in a
building is the most common type of beams. The bending moment and
shear force will look like this:
As the BMD indicates, compression is in the top while tension is in the
bottom. The compression flange is continuously restrained in position
by the presence of floor slab. i.e. these beams are laterally restrained
beams. In other words, these beams cannot LTB! As a result, the design
process is very straight forward and follows the same procedures in the
last tutorial.
The first step is to find out how much loads are applied onto the beam.
Under gravity loads, there are dead loads (G) and imposed load (Q).
Imposed loads are also called “live loads”. Deadloads are determined
by weight of materials, and other specifications. In the real world, the
structural engineer will need to make estimations. Underestimation
could possibly lead to structural failure (collapse)!
Imposed loads (Q) are specified in AS1170.1. Notice that these are
minimum values, in situations where a larger load may be present, the
structural engineer should always take a more conservative value.
Example
Design the secondary (SB1) and primary beam (PB3) using the
following design information:
Deadload
weight of slab = 3.7kPa
Partition = Nil
Ceiling services = 0.3kPa
Floor finishes = 0.15kPa
Fire proof = 0.6kN/m
Imposed load
Given imposed load = 2.0kPa