The design situations in RFEM control which combination rules are applied when generating load and result combinations for the limit states of the standard. Manually created combinations can also be assigned to specific limit states (see the chapter Design Situations of the RFEM manual).
The “Design Situations” table for steel design lists all design situations defined in the model. Here, you can decide whether and how a specific design situation should be considered for steel design checks.
Selecting Design Combinations for Steel Design
The “To Design” check box is activated by default. This means that all design situations are analyzed in the steel design. If no steel design is required for a design situation, deactivate the check box. This design situation will then not be taken into account in the design checks. This selection is synchronized with the settings in the “Load Cases and Combinations” dialog box.
By default, all combinations of a design situation activated for design are taken into account. However, in the table column “Combinations to Design for Enumeration Method,” you can also specify specific combinations of the design situation: Click the
button, which is available by clicking in the cell, and then select the relevant combinations in the dialog box.
Assigning Design Situations
The design situations were created on the basis of the standard specified for the load case classification (see the chapter Standards I of the RFEM manual). It is possible that the type of design situation is different from the type for the design. However, the types are usually assigned automatically, so that a serviceability combination from the load case combination is also assigned to the “serviceability” design type. You can check this assignment in the “Design Situation Type” table column and correct it, if necessary.
The design checks performed in the add-on are based on a design situation type. For example, if there is no design situation with the serviceability limit state, no serviceability limit state design is performed, but only the ultimate limit state design checks. For each design situation, only the design checks belonging to the design situation type are performed.
You can also activate several design situations of the same type for the design, such as two design situations for the ultimate limit state design checks. The add-on then performs the ultimate limit state design for the selected combinations of both design situations.
Use Different Material for Design
The “Different Materials” option in the Load Cases and Combinations dialog box provides the option to change materials for design checks of the design situation. If you select the check box, you can specify alternatives in a new tab.
You can use different material parameters for structural analysis and for design.