Section Design

The section design modules include powerful drawing and editing tools which enable the engineer to define any arbitrary shaped outlines, reinforcement bars and pre-stressing tendons. There are facilities to define a variety of parametric shapes and regular polygons, including libraries of standard steel and concrete sections. The section co-ordinates can be imported or exported as simple ASCII text files, and may also be saved in user customisable libraries.

For any section defined, the program calculates section properties (including torsion properties with continuous faces). Gross section, transformed section, net transformed section and plastic section properties are included.

Differential temperature gradient analysis is also available for any section. The temperature gradients can be specified using profiles in accordance with a variety of design standards, or from user defined profiles. Early thermal cracking calculations for concrete sections is available for British Standards.

For concrete sections, the program performs section capacity calculations for both service and ultimate limit state conditions in accordance with a variety of design standards. Load effects that can be applied are Moment (x and y), Axial Force (N) and shear (x and y). Limiting capacities can be found for two of M_x, M_y and N. Crack width calculations are also included for British Standards. Interaction curves for action effects of bi-axial bending and axial loads can be produced; these are particularly useful for designing pier and column sections.


Standard material properties for reinforcement and concrete are provided as well as general material properties and user defined stress/strain profiles.

Graphical presentation of input data and output results are available. Fully detailed hand calculation style output is also provided.

Section Design Modules Summary

A summary of the available section design modules is shown below. For a full worked example download the demonstration program. If you require any further information, please fill in an on-line request here or contact Bestech Systems direct.

Module	Description	British Standards	American Standards	Australian Standards	Eurocodes*
S.01	Section Properties for any section
S.02	Differential temperature analysis for any section
S.04	Design and assessment of concrete sections
S.05	Design of concrete sections to BS 8110
S.06	Torsion Properties for any section
S.07	Early thermal cracking for concrete sections

* - Eurocodes are currently available in a beta form.

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