Hello,
I am a senior at UNC Charlotte, I am currently in the process of completing my senior design project using RAM Structural System. I am new to the program and am trying to teach myself as I go. I have already completed my model within the program and have ran into some major issues when trying to use the design/all function for beams. The project is a one story day care building with a flat roof membrane( metal decking, insulation, gypsum board, and a weather membrane).
1. I'm having trouble understanding the process of designing the roof decking for the building. I have created a non-composite decking component and implemented the unit weight of the membrane and the appropriate factors but it seams that this load can only be applied if a slab area has been selected. Even upon outlining the structure with the slab area and implementing the custom decking, the beams RAM produces from these loads are no where near correct. I have to be doing something wrong somewhere, I just cannot determine where.
2. When I choose the design all option and the beams are designed, I go to Process -> view/update and I select a beam at random. Then in the dialog box I choose to view diagram, where the shear and moment diagrams are located and I notice that the beam is deflecting well over the deflection criteria assigned to that particular beam. This is true for the whole structure, I can manually change the beam design in the dialog box but I would feel more comfortable with RAM designing the beam accurately the first time. This is also leading to the same member being used throughout the entire structure, meaning that a w12X44 is being used across multiple different tributary widths.
3. When I use the View/Update function I notice that the program is using the formula of 1.4DL to determine the loads applied on the structure instead of the LRFD equation of 1.2DL+1.6LL+0.5W. This is forcing my model to neglect the live load only design for dead load. I know that I have the option to change it manually but the results only change slightly. If I have missed the process of choosing the correct load combinations, where can I change this detail. Can this be resolved by setting a size restriction?
I am pretty confused about all of this, as you can tell, and would greatly appreciate the help!