Afternoon All,
I have been doing quite a bit of demolition work recently and I would greatly appreciate some advice. One of the most common request I receive for this type of work is to review existing floor structures for demolition equipment loads. More often or not, I receive existing structural drawings showing all the member sizes and reinforcement along with data sheets for the proposed demolition equipment.
I have been using the strip wizard in RAM Concept which seems to be the ideal tool for this type of job particularly in the current case where I have a building which is being refurbished but the existing structure is being retained and thus I want to ensure the slab does not undergo excessive deflection during the demolition phase. I have generated a RAM Concept model of the area of the building based on the existing structural documentation onto which the contractor proposes to locate a 3T tracked excavator.
Normally I approach these types of problems by starting with the excavator the contractor proposes to use and determine if the floor passes or fails. If the floor passes, I normally keep increasing the size of the excavator until it reaches its limit for future reference and to satisfy myself that the floor is behaving as anticipated. Similarly, if the floor fails, I will start reducing the size of the excavator until I find the maximum excavator size the floor will support without back propping or alternatively, I will keep the excavator size as per the contractor's request and add back propping until such time as the floor will work based on the existing member sizes and reinforcement layout.
The difficulty with RAM Concept is that when the floor fails, the program adds reinforcement as required. Since these are all existing floors, I am not particularly interested in what reinforcement is required but rather I am looking for the program to give me a pass/fail answer. Is there any way of telling RAM Concept not to add reinforcement?
Anthony McTigue
BE (Hons), MIEI, PhD
Engineering Elements
75 Upper Heidelberg Road,
Ivanhoe, VIC 3079
Australia