Identification of Licensed Joint Groups

In this article, a lap joint of a ZL purlin on a monopitch roof is modeled and designed using the Steel Joints add-on, and compared with the load-bearing capacity table of the manufacturer.

Steel connections in RFEM 6 can be created by simply entering predefined components in the Steel Joints add-on. The collection of these components is constantly being improved to make your work even easier even when modeling steel connections. In this article, the connection plate component is introduced as a component recently added to the add-on's library.

The advantage of the RFEM 6 Steel Joints add-on is that you can analyze steel connections using an FE model for which the modeling runs fully automatically in the background. The input of the steel joint components that control the modeling can be done by defining the components manually, or by using the available templates in the library. The latter method is included in a previous Knowledge Base article titled “Defining Steel Joint Components Using the Library". The definition of parameters for the design of steel joints is the topic of the Knowledge Base article “Designing Steel Joints in RFEM 6".

You can now insert a cap plate in steel joints with only a few clicks. You can enter the data using the known definition types "Offsets" or "Dimensions and Position". By specifying a reference member and the cutting plane, it is also possible to omit the Member Section component.

This component allows you to easily model cap plates on column ends, for example.

You can use the "Plate Cut" component to cut plates (for example, gusset plates, fin plates, and so on). There are various cutting methods available:

• Plane: The cut is performed on the closest surface to the reference plate.
• Surface: Only the intersecting parts of plates are cut.
• Bounding Box: The outermost dimension consisting of width and height is cut out of the plate as a rectangle.
• Convex Envelope: The outer hull of the cross-section is used for the plate cut. If there are fillets at the corner nodes of the cross-section, the cut is adapted to them.

In the Steel Joints add-on, you can perform precise cuts on plates and structural components using the "Auxiliary Solid" component. Within this component, you can use the shapes of a box, a cylinder, or any cross-section as a guide object.

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