Database-assisted design of high-rise structures using ETABS software

Abstract

This User s Manual is associated with the DAD_ETABS vesion 1.0 software based on the Database-Assisted Design (DAD) procedure for the design of high-rise steel buildings for wind, used in conjunction with the structural analysis and design program ETABS. For the design of structures for wind ETABS has so far been used in conjunction with static wind loads specified by building codes or wind engineering laboratories. The marriage of DAD with ETABS significantly enhances the capabilities of both programs. DAD allows the direct use of wind-tunnel measurements of time-varying pressure coefficients to determine the time-dependent wind loading induced by any directional wind speed. Structural and dynamic analyses performed by ETABS determine the dependence of any desired building response (i.e., member Demand-to-Capacity Indexes (DCI), inter-story drift ratios, floor accelerations) on wind speed and direction. Representations of this dependence, called response surfaces, are properties of the structure independent of wind climate. They are used to transform the matrix of the wind velocities at the building site into response matrices for as many responses as are required for structural design purposes. The elements of a response matrix are responses induced by their counterparts in the wind velocity matrix. For any response being considered, the vector whose components are the largest entry in each row of the response matrix is a data sample of the largest responses induced in the structure by the elements of the wind velocity matrix. The N-year response is obtained from that sample by using any appropriate extreme value estimation tool. The DAD_ETABS version 1.0 software was developed for the design of steel prismatic structures with rectangular shapes in plan. The User s Manual includes an example of the application of the software.