Basics of Structural Beam Load Analysis and Beam Connection Design

AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction) is the controlling authority for implementing uniform steel fabrication practices in USA. For this, AISC has provided LRFD Specifications for structural steel buildings to help commercial designers. These specifications help identify clearly the structural resistance within the elastic and inelastic ranges of behavior and the maximum load limit state.

The objective of structural beam design is to create a physical structure that can withstand all environmental conditions to which it is subjected. Many factors influence the design process, from foundation to loading to dimension lay out to risk and cost, but ultimately the final design is a reflection of the properties of the construction material and the geometrical imperfection of its structural components, and in particular its mechanical properties.

Today, in engineering design practice, there exists a basic two-stage process for structural beam design: firstly, the forces acting on each structural beam in the structure are calculated; secondly, the load carrying capacity of each of these structural beams to those forces acting on it is evaluated.

The first phase involves an analysis of the distribution of forces and moments acting on each of these structural beams; the second phase involves detailing of the load carrying capacity of these beams to withstand these forces and moments acting on them. The more comprehensive this details, the more exact will be the design and the more reliable will be the structure.

Since the load carrying capacity of structural beam is dependent on the type of loads acting on the beam, geometrical irregularities and material properties, load-carrying capacity is determined mostly on the basis of full scale tests for axially loaded beams and beam-column interaction curves. These beam strength curves are commonly coded as the beam strength curves or equations for design purpose.

At present, the structural engineer evaluates design primarily on the simple model of linear elasticity of the material. Structural steel beam design emerges successful only when proper analysis is done (many times using CAD 3D models) and with right structural analysis considering both axial forces and bending moments.

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