RAM Structural System Help

Vibration Analysis - SCI Publication P354

Selecting the Vibration - SCI Publication P354 command will cause the program to classify each beam in the floor layout according to the type of bay of which they are a part and color-code them accordingly. The target cursor can be used to select any beam in any valid bay to be analyzed.

SettingDescription
Bay Classification Bays fall into one of the following three classifications:
  • A "Perfect" bay is one that "perfectly" matches the regular orthogonal bays described in the Design Guide. Beams in those bays are painted blue.
  • An "Imperfect" bay is one for which part of the bay exhibits characteristics of a "Perfect" bay but has one or more geometric features that deviate from such. Beams in those bays are painted yellow.
  • An "Irregular" bay is one that does not conform to those bays described in the Design Guide. Miscellaneous beams that are not part of a bay are also included in this classification. Beams in those bays are painted gray.
FloorVibe A program called FloorVibe has been developed by renowned vibration expert Dr. Thomas Murray of Virginia Tech. through his company, Structural Engineers, Inc., and is already commercially available. It is capable of performing a vibration analysis on floor systems consisting of composite and non-composite hot-rolled and built-up steel beams, steel joists and CMC Smartbeams. The criteria for walking excitation, rhythmic excitation and sensitive equipment have been incorporated. Rather than performing the vibration calculations within the RAM Steel Beam Design module, a link between RAM Steel and FloorVibe has been implemented. When a vibration analysis is to be performed in RAM Steel, the FloorVibe program is automatically launched with the pertinent geometric data automatically passed from one program to the other, and the analysis is performed by FloorVibe. This gives the engineer all of the power and capabilities of FloorVibe.

Although the geometry is exported from RAM Steel to FloorVibe, all vibration criteria and other pertinent data must be specified in FloorVibe.

All vibration analysis results are obtained directly from FloorVibe.

FloorVibe must be installed in order for this feature to be available.

Vibration Analysis When a beam is selected, the bay of which it is a part is analyzed as explained here.

For "Irregular" bays (gray) no vibration analysis is performed, as that analysis would be meaningless (and probably erroneous). When an "Irregular" bay member is selected for analysis, an message is given indicating that no analysis can be performed on that bay.

For "Perfect" bays, those in which the bay "perfectly" match the Design Guide bays, the vibration analysis is performed directly by launching FloorVibe with all pertinent size and geometry data passed from RAM Steel to FloorVibe.

For "Imperfect" bays, those bays that exhibit some characteristic but have some deviation from the "perfect" bay, the vibration analysis cannot be performed until after the user has "idealized" the bay by indicating how those deviations should be appropriately approximated as a "Perfect" bay. To accommodate this, a dialog box appears showing the framing of the bay selected and the corresponding idealized bay. Edit boxes and controls in the dialog box contain the data defining the bay. This data is filled in as much as possible by the program; where there is ambiguity or where there are significant variations from the configuration of a "Perfect" bay, the values are left blank. All entered values should be verified and any missing data supplied by the user. When the all of the necessary data has been entered, selecting OK will cause the FloorVibe program to be launched with the data as specified.

To assist the user in determining the data to enter into the Define Idealized Framing dialog box, the reasons that the bay was not considered a Perfect bay are listed in the "Bay Imperfections" section. The beam and girder sizes are shown on the Actual Framing graphic; by selecting the Show Length button the beam and girder lengths will be shown instead.

The Floor Width and Floor Length values represent the distances between slab edges or bays of significantly different framing. When the bay is a "Perfect" bay the program determines these values automatically by determining the extent of additional "Perfect" bays in each direction and summing up these distances. If slab edges or walls are encountered during this search, those elements are assumed to define the limits of the Floor Width and Floor Length values, as well as any bay whose length is less than one-half of that of the bay selected, or any bay with a change in the direction of the framing. This approach may be conservative as it will ignore the contribution of any "Imperfect" bays to these values (which in some cases could be included in the values). See Design Guide #11 for more information on the definition of these values. If the bay selected for analysis is not a "Perfect" bay, these values are not calculated automatically, but must be determined and entered by the user.

Refer to the documentation for more information.

Steel Beams See the FloorVibe documentation for limitations on the shapes that can be analyzed.

Channels and rectangular hallow sections are exported to FloorVibe as user Defined shapes.

Built-up I-shapes are exported to FloorVibe as User Defined shapes.

Walls When bay beams are supported by walls RAM Steel will export that information to FloorVibe. In some cases where the beams are each support by closely spaced columns the program will recognize that analytically that is the same as being supported by a wall and will pass that information to FloorVibe as such.