Flange Bracing
Selecting opens the Compression Flange Bracing dialog.
Beam flanges can be specified as braced continuously along the top flange, continuously along the bottom flange or not braced continuously (by not selecting either bracing option). Brace points established in RAM Modeler are always retained.
The Consider Point of Inflection option does not mean that the Point of Inflection will or will not be considered a brace point; rather, it affects the way the program looks at brace points of the flanges on either side of the point of inflection when determining the unbraced length. Refer to the documentation for a complete explanation.
Column flanges can be declared to be braced by the deck. If a beam frames into a given face of a column within the angle specified by Maximum angle from column axis for which beam braces column, the column is considered braced in that axis.
The engineer can also indicate whether a knee brace framing into a column should be considered to brace the column during design.
Clicking OK will save the Flange Bracing settings. Modifying the Flange Bracing criteria after a code check has been performed will invalidate the results of that code check. The model will be redrawn on the screen in its original colors (rather than the code check colors) indicating that the code check must be re-run.
Clicking Cancel will return you to RAM Frame in Steel mode without changing the Flange Bracing criteria.
The engineer can also assign flange bracing on a member-by-member basis, overriding the global criteria. For columns this is done by selecting the Assign-Column-Bracing menu item and for beams by selecting the Assign-Beams-Flange Bracing menu item.