Action Court Warehouse Extension

Beta Scope

• Structural design for the warehouse extensions.
• Strengthening of the existing structural frame (portal frame single storey warehouse)
•  Secondary steel design.
•  Preparing fabrication package for new frame, strengthening works and the secondary steel.

Background

Beta Design Consultants were commissioned by Lomas Steel Structures and Glencar Construction to provide the structural steel design for the two units warehouse extension. The client brief was extending an existing warehouse by modifying frames that currently span half the span of the final span. The client aim was to reuse the existing side columns and rafter beams of the short span and strengthen them so they could be part of the new frame. The intention is to achieve this full span without any internal columns or foundations.
Beta Design Consultants instructed a surveying company to carry out a 3D survey for both Existing Units to ensure the new extensions and strengthened frame members are matching with the existing so that accurate fabrication drawings can be produced within 1mm-5mm tolerance.

Beta Solution

Beta Structural Engineers established the conceptual and preliminary design, which identified the approximate member sizes and the steel quantities. Based on that, our immediate client, Lomas Steel Structures put in their tender for D&B and secured the project. Beta provided the concept design to prove to the client that such a solution was workable.
This was followed by a detailed structural analysis, with the use of Scia Engineer, to define the exact sizes and to standardize the sections for efficient fabrication and installation.

Practical Details

Scia Engineer was used for the modelling, analysis and design of the structure according to the EN 1993 British BS-EN NA. Our design made use of guidance in the Eurocode to consider the nominal stiffness of base plates and allow for 20% of the column stiffness when checking deflections. This allowed us to produce a very efficient structural design.

Tekla Structures was used to produce fabrication shop drawings for the primary and the secondary steel for the extension and the strengthening and any modifications in the existing/new openings for the both units.

Idea Statica was used to design all steel to steel connections and achieve maximum standardisation possible to reduce cost of fabrication and time of installation. All the cold rolled secondary steels (purlins, rails, bracings) were designed using Ayrshire software.

Our engineers were on site to support the client and the contractor, attend design meetings, support the surveying team and answer any technical queries.

Measured deflections after removing the mid-column were compared with calculated deflection as per the design. The comparison verified that the design values were matched during installation.