When designing steel columns or steel beams, it is usually necessary to carry out cross-section design and stability analysis. While the cross-section design can usually be performed without giving further details, the stability analysis requires further user-defined entries. To a certain extent, the member is cut out of the structure; therefore, the support conditions have to be specified. This is particularly important when determining the ideal elastic critical moment Mcr. Furthermore, it is necessary to define the correct effective lengths Lcr. These are required for the internal calculation of slenderness ratios.
The following article describes a design using the equivalent member method according to [1] Section 6.3.2, performed on an example of a cross-laminated timber wall susceptible to buckling described in Part 1 of this article series. The buckling analysis will be performed as a compressive stress analysis with reduced compressive strength. For this, the instability factor kc is determined, which depends primarily on the component slenderness and the support type.
Due to the structural efficiency and economic benefits, dome-shaped roofs are frequently used for storehouses or stadiums. Even if the dome has the corresponding geometrical shape, it is not easy to estimate wind loads due to the Reynolds number effect. The external pressure coefficients (cpe) depend on the Reynolds numbers and on the slenderness of the structure. EN 1991‑1‑4 [1] can help you to estimate the wind loads on a dome. Based on this, the following article explains how to define a wind load in RFEM. Wind loads of the structure shown in Image 01 can be divided as follows: Wind Load on Wall, Wind Load on Dome.