Figure 7: Input Frame Locations Figure 8: Definition of Frame Locations □ Input Attachment Locations. The locations at which girts and purlins are attached to the frames are defined by specifying the spacing between purlins and between girts in the dialog box shown in Figure 9. The locations of girts and purlins can be further edited by accessing the building input file once it has been saved. Figure 9: Input Attachment Locations □ Input Frame Supports. Using the dialog box shown in Figure 10, the support conditions (either “pinned” or “fixed”) of the frames can be specified. Figure 10: Input Frame Supports □ Input Steel Design Parameters. In this interface (Figure 11), the yield stress and modulus of elasticity of the steel material used are defined. Figure 11: Input Frame Design Parameters In the Design Information panel of the windDESIGN Menu interface, options for selecting and specifying; type of building enclosure (i.e. enclosed Cpi = +/- 0.18, partially enclosed Cpi = +/- 0.55, or open Cpi = 0), design parameters and gravity loads are also provided. Pressing the “Input Design Parameters” and “Input Gravity Loads” buttons open the dialog boxes shown in Figure 12 and Figure 13 respectively. In the dialog box shown in Figure 12, design wind speed
Figure 15: Select Response Computation Options Figure 16: Input Sampling Rate Reduction Once the wind-induced time history of responses are computed and saved, the listing of available response files in the Time History of Responses panel will be updated. Note that the responses computed here are for a wind speed of 1 ft/s at building eave height and are saved in .mat file format. The computed time histories of responses can be displayed graphically (Figure 17) by pressing the Display button under each listing. The user interface shown in Figure 17 also enables saving the time-history of response being displayed in a .csv file format. If results of responses from previous calculations are being used, the Pressure Databases panel can be skipped by directly selecting the folder containing the time-history of response files/files in the Time History of Responses panel. The Select Response Computation Options dialog box (Figure 15) can also be accessed using the Response Computation Options button in the Time History of Responses panel. In the time-history of responses listing, if more than one response output file is selected within one terrain, the interpolate button will be visible and interpolation of of responses can be performed. Figure 17: Output of Time-series of Responses Design of Frames Pressing the Design Frames button at the bottom of the interfaces shown in Figure 3 and Figure 14 will open the Design of Frames interface (Figure 18). In this interface: In the Building Definition panel, the building input file can be selected, and the preliminary frame design and the influence coefficients of each member can be displayed.
The final design case calculates without iterations the DCIPM and/or DCIV of preliminarily designed members provided by users. Once the design procedure is completed, the Designed Frame Sections interface shown in Figure 19 will appear. This interface displays the section dimensions as well as the DCIPM and DCIV results, and provides an option for saving the design results in a “.csv” file format. Figure 19: Designed Frame Sections After the first design process is completed, the “Re-Design Frames” button in the Design of Frame Members for Selected MRI panel will be visible. If this button is pressed, the preliminary frame designs will be replaced by the new frame sections, new influence coefficients are calculated based on the new frame design, and the design process can be repeated again. 2.2 Building File Building input files can be prepared manually or using the Enter Building Information interface shown in Figure 4. Once all the required inputs in the Enter Building Information interface are specified, pressing the Save Building Input File will create a .csv file format building input file (Figure 20). All the required keywords (keywords begin with asterisk) except *UNITS (which defines the basic units used in the building input file) can be specified through Enter Building Information interface. The default units used are ft, lb, and ft/s for length, force
APPENDIX A In this appendix, descriptions of the variables existing in the bldg_struct, TIF_struct and DCI_struct data-structures are provided. (‘*’ denotes variable description and ‘–’ denotes values of the variable for the design example provided above). Table A: Variables of the bldg_struct Data-structure d0 *a vector with the building’s geometric dimensions, [B, L, H, R] in ft. [52.5, 78.7, 26.2, 6.56] Filename * the building input filename ‘BLDG W=52.5,L=78.7,H=26.2,R=6.6,Suburban.csv’ pathname * pathname of the building input file ‘C:\....’ length_units *length unit ‘ft’ force_units *force unit ‘lb’ ws_units *wind speed unit ‘ft/s’ terrain * terrain surrounding the building being designed ‘Suburban’ z0 *terrain roughness in feet 0.984 frame_coords *Nf x 3 matrix describing the location of the frames being designed, (Nf represents number of frames being designed) attach_points *Na x 2 matrix describing the location of each purlin/girt on the frame, (Na represents number of attachments) - [face number, location along face] column support *support system of the left and columns [“pinned”, “pinned”] frame_design_ parameters *vector with the user specified design parameters and static loads [design wind speed, minimum web height, yield strength, elasticity, flange width, purlin/girt height, dead load, roof live load, rain load, maximum DCI] section_type *the type of frame cross-section used ‘I-Section’