Strand7 Software:  In Detail:  Reinforced Concrete:  Pre Processing

Reinforced concrete design capabilities

Concrete is a widely used construction material with high compressive yet low tensile strengths. Its poor performance in tension must therefore be addressed by incorporating steel reinforcement in the area where tensile strength has to be enhanced; compression reinforcement is also sometimes needed to provide additional strength and stiffness. Strand7 provides a design tool to model and analyse reinforced concrete structures of custom geometry and properties using plate elements.

Pre processing Reinforcement Layout The reinforcement can be analysed using one of two methods, the simplified bending method which considers only the tensile reinforcement and the bending moments or the elasto-plastic method which can additionaly consider the compressive layers as well as the membrane forces. The reinforced concrete module is designed to support a range of codes including AS 3600, Eurocode 2, and the ACI 318.

Up to four layers of reinforcement bars can be specified and they can be set up as symmetric or anti-symmetric.

The properties of the concrete and steel, and code related factors can be entered.

Reinforcement Library Similar to the Strand7 material and section libraries, reinforcement layouts can be read from and stored to a reinforcement database for ease of access in any future models.

Reinforcement Orientation The reinforcement layout is oriented to the local axes of the plate elements and can be adjusted conveniently using a tool.

Automatic alignment tool is also available.