Bestech's Sam

Bridge Beam Design Using Sam Software

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Sam has a number of different modules for bridge beam design software.

  • Steel/Concrete Composite Bridge Beam Design

  • Precast-pretensioned Bridge Beam Design with tendon optimisation

  • Reinforced Concrete Bridge Beam Design

The way in which these module work are all similar, but vary slightly from one another.

  • The engineer specifies some material properties, and then defines a number of cross sections and associates material properties with the parts of the section (steel for the steel beam, different grades of concrete, voids etc). The sections are then placed at distances along the beam and if necessary a soffit profile is defined. This information defines the section properties at every point along the beam.
  • Reinforcement or prestressed tendons are defined separately from the rest of the beam geometry.
  • In order to do the design, tables of moment, shear and axial loads have to be entered for various loading stages. These can come from any source, but are best derived from Sam's analysis modules.
  • The design results are shown graphically, so that when either there is insufficient capacity (the beam fails) or too much capacity (the beam is oversize) then the extent of the problem can be assessed, and the layouts of the sections, reinforcement, tendons or cables can be altered until the design passes for all loading stages.
  • In the case of precast pretensioned beams, the tendons can be optimised automatically so as to minimise the number of tendons and still be able to be adequate for all load stages.
  • If the sections have to be changed then the results from the analysis will be different, so it is a simple matter to re-run the analysis, send the new results back to the altered beam and check that it still passes its design criteria.
  • The results at any section at any stage can be displayed and printed as mimics of an engineer's hand calculations, which allows the program to be checked thoroughly, as well as aiding engineers with learning a new design code.

These modules are available for AASHTO LRFD, Eurocodes, BS5400 & UK DMRB, AS5100 and Transit NZ where appropriate.

Please contact us for details of availability and prices, or download the Module Specifications.