As a Structural Bridge Engineer,
analyzing, design and review of prestress girders is part of my everyday
assignments.
To make my life easy, I have made my
own spreadsheets as well as finite element tools to complete above tasks.
Design or review, my approach is two
way.
1. Spreadsheet
2. Finite
Element Model - either using commercially available software Midas Civil,
Bridge CSI or Stadd Pro
I use my own spread
sheets to perform preliminary design, initial assessment to great extent.
Figure 1 : My Spread sheet to
analyze time dependent behavior of the PSC girder
Use of my own spreadsheet helps to
strengthen my confidence on the task where I have so much control over the
design I have undertaken.
Figure 2 : evaluating the stresses
and Deflections using my own spread sheets
Once I conducted my preliminary
analysis, though it is very much closer to manual detail design, I review the
design using a commercially available software. Midas Civil is a great software
where it provides many features that a bridge designer required.
Figure 4 : Grillage Model for single
span PSC girder
Figure 5 : 3D Model of the PSC
Girder
Figure 6 : Result Interpretation and
tendon Profile check
This two way approach has made my
work tasks effective as well as efficient and made much complex
tasks in to achievable miles stones.
