WR1

1. There is no difference but you should not use the cracked versions. This is unethical and unprofessional too. 2. You contact sales dept of CSI for this. They would be more than happy to sell their products.

ok ignore my comments in post#9. I thought its a big raft. You might need more thickness here (less continuity). Anyway take a screenshot by right clicking on perimeter column showing punching so I can see why it is failing these columns in punching.

@Yousaf You will not increase entire raft thickness. Just draw a raft of minimum thickness. I dont know why you require 0.7m thickness. It could be only 350mm. After having drawn this, draw isolated foundations over the already existing raft foundation slab. Make its thickness as per punching requirements. May be 1m. At the edges or peripheries you could increase the raft thickness to 0.7m but inside 350mm should work for usual loading. Yes please provide the sketch. @Waqas I did not get what are you trying to say. You are talking about slab or foundation? In slabs you provide drop panels for punching and negative moment and invert this for foundations and you get localized footings with raft.

Thanks EngUzair, and well done sir Umar

It would depend. Edge columns usually dont have problem in punching (they carry half load as compared to the interior ones). But again there is lot of moment. So it depends upon loading and span. I dont see much problem in edge columns as far as punching is concerned for usual spans and loading.

Yes, As Umar pointed out, in order for the beam to behave as a beam with raft or flat slab, it should have sufficient thickness.

PE in which country? I am not sure about Pakistan. But I know about FE, PE and SE licenses in USA. See NICEE website if you can do that. Getting a PE for a specified state of USA is I think very beneficial for your repute as a professional engineer. I am also looking forward to take the exam in near future.

Just draw a line element for punching. It will not calculate the punching and design shear reinforcement for beam for required forces. Otherwise just increase localized thickness under the column for punching. Its a common practice in raft construction.Top of these isolated footings and raft will be at one level.

My 2cents... Dont go for site if you are interested in design. Once you are on site, you will get stuck there, and even if you try to come back to design you will be considered as fresh in the field as others pointed out. Stick to the design, yes you need to have actual on site understanding of things, which you can learn at any stage (may be after 5 yrs of design experience)? You can learn it. But after 5 years of experience at site, you cannt come back to design. And dont worry about that first 5 years period in design office. You can have visits to the site to coorelate your design with actual site execution.

I forgot to mention that you could consider minimum salary here in middle east for 0 experience to be somewhat around 6k.. After 3yrs of experience consider the above equation upto 10-15yrs. After that its politics..

Taimur, some 2600 years ago Pindar said, become who you are, by knowing who you are! Structural engineering is a very challenging field and remember something Ashraf HabibUllah and ofcourse other famous people said "Go for your passion, money will come to you ultimately" I would also recommend you to watch a lecture in Princeton University by Leslie Robertson, the one who worked on WTC in 60s/70s To cut it short, you need to first determine, whats your passion? Money? or Structural Engineering? Design or Site? I dont believe evaluating career growth. If you have desire to grow, you will, in any field you are interested in. Even in USA with a PE license the avg salary of a structural engineer is 120$k/yr. Thats not much but a modest amount when the middle class earning as much as 400-500$k/yr. So you wont be truely RICH if you go in structural engineering. If you really want to be then go for the money (thats not bad though). For middle east you can have an idea by this equation (pretty simple, factual and accurate) you salary = no. of years x 2 in dirhams or riyals (including everything housing, perks, transportation, all). if you want this 2 to be 3, you have to be exceptionally well not just in structural engineering but also with your personality. Get a PE license and might be SE too. And at the end, summary is if you are really passionate about structural engineering then forget about money now...I understand money is important for subsistence needs and structural engineering will offer you enough for that but not enough to be in upper class..so decide..

You can draw unit width slabs with uniform thickness. Keep doing it and keep reducing your slab thickness to model tapered footings. But I would not recommend that for such a problem. FEM is sensitive when thickness changes. So If you reall want to do as accurate as possible modelling (although FEM is still an approximation) you can use other softwares like STRAND7 or LUSAS or any other. In SAFE I would have modelled it with average thickness (or even less than that based on engineering judgement and specific conditions). You can always develop rationality on any problem with given constraints. Thats creativity you know!

Its only for US

1. Joint B/C check is not done for low seismic zones. Its beam column joint capacity.

yes

okay, here it is. This ~dummy case is generated internally when export from ETABS and importing as f2k file in SAFE. This is was an internal programming hiccup and you can delete it. This export issue will be resolved in next ETABS versions.

1DL + 1LL is for short term linear elastic deflection. You should multiply this by a factor given in ACI chapter 9 for long term deflection. Or perform actual long term deflection in SAFE by using creep and shrinkage coefficients (time taking and boring..right? Okay! just a trick here, make ETABS combination of 1.0 Dead cases + 1.0 Live cases and apply cracked modifiers. Check this deflection, it should be nearly similar to long term deflection. Increase it by some percentage to be on safer side. Compare this by L/240 or L/480 and L should be in the direction of deflected shape contour.

Thanks for sharing!

basically M11 will be horizontal leg of stirrup, M22 will be longitudinal beam reinforcement and check shear too, for vertical parts of stirrups.

oho bhai reinforcement type has nothing to do with the type of FEM element you select. You can provide the reinforcement in center part as you have shown in image. But for analysis I would recommend you to model it as slab. Then provide reinforcement details as done in beams but take results from this slab element in SAFE

aha you are taling about the stepped footing. okay just draw left part as one slab in SAFE and draw right part too. Then in the center, draw this slab with more thickness. Thats it. No need to adjust by cardinal points.

Well it replicated self weight. Just delete it. Let me also just ask CSI ppl about this and update you later on.

Finite Element Modelling for Stress Analysis by Robert D Cook

First picture is for the strap beam, you can design it manually (see Nilson book for it) or model it in SAFE. just draw as Umar said, a slab area with equal width to that of strap beam. Dont apply soil supports to strap beam. If you need an excel sheet based on imperial units tell me, I prepared it some time ago. Second picture shows isolated column thickening with basement slab. You can model this as told in first step. The only difference is you will apply soil supports to basement slab too. Just draw isolated column footing with a thickness, and then draw basement slab with its thickness. Third picture shows strip foundation for columns, same modelling procedure will be adopted. Draw strip foundations and apply supports.

2- Upper columns will have higher moment and less axial force so more area of steel. Yes you could provide different reinforcement in upper and lower stories as per your design. 3-yes you have to check serviceability for beams. Code minimum thicknesses are "deemed" to be okay but its independent of loading magnitude. You can check long term deflection on actual loading in SAFE.