Development Of Interactive Software for Analysis, Design And Drafting Of Self Supported Mild Steel Chimney

Abstract

Today, it is essential for a structural engineer to produce accurate and quick work output; which is possible only with the aid of suitable computer softwares. In this project, an attempt is made to develop a general purpose menu-driven interactive software, with graphics, for analysis, design and drafting (workingexecution drawings) of self supported mild steel chimneys. Microsoft’s “QuickBASIC 4.0” programming language is used for the coding of the four interlinked modules of the software viz. Module 1 Data Preprocessor to input/edit data Module 2 Analysis & Design to analysis & design the chimney as per relevant codes of Practice of the bureau of Standards (BIS) Module 3 Post processor to interpret/edit the results of analysis & design. Module 4 Drafting to create the “script” files for autogeneration of drawing (.DWG) files in AutoCAD. This project is aimed to generate very accurate and time-consuming designs; to overcome the very laborious and time-consuming manual computations. Moreover, an algorithm has been developed to generate output files, containing all the analysis & design calculations/results, in a very systematic tabular form. Such generated outputs comprising of all the detailed calculations can be submitted to local authorities, wherever mandatory, for sanction/approval of the structural designs. Particularly, in all the design offices, major time and efforts of a structural engineer are consumed in checking/verification of the working – execution drawings/details prepared by the draftsmen. The “Drafting module” of this project generates the execution drawings in AutoCAD automatically – thus reducing/ eliminating the need for checking/verification them. Thus a lot of IV valuable man-hours of both structural engineers and the structural draftsmen can be saved. Many chimneys, with different data, were solved manually. The same data were then input in the software to verify/confirm the correctness of the programmed code. Such data includes the conventional chimneys with a conical flare at the base & a cylindrical stack above; a total cylindrical stack chimney and a total conical (frustum) chimney.