Steel Design Project

The project was a 4-month project distributed to teams of 5, we were to design a 3-storey steel warehouse structure to withstand a variety of loads in differing loading conditions, including dead, live, snow and wind loads.

The primary objective was to design a steel structure that met CISC CSA S16:19 conditions while minimizing steel used to create an economically competitive structure.

The design process began by computing and setting the factored loading conditions in order to determine the conditions which would govern the design’s details. These loading conditions were then used to decide viable members for the MRF, CBF and gravity frames.

Calculations were first performed by hand, and then verified using a SAP2000 model, created by myself, to analyze the structure in its entirety.

Reflection

This project was critical to my development in engineering, and structural engineering specifically. While I had experience in structural design and in using FEA software like SAP2000, this was my first exposure to handling design in a team environment as opposed to alone.

Throughout the course of designing the structure, our team would strategically split different frames to be handled by different people, initially this posed a challenge as limited communication lead to varying member choices which did not always mesh together well. We ended up changing our working patterns to more closely communicate choices before we made them.

Ultimately, this was a beneficial long-term project which helped me further develop team-working and helped me to refine problem-solving and CAD skills.