Technical Note

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TN306_rebar_editing_10
072808

EDITING OF COMPUTER REBAR IN FLOOR-PRO

Bijan O Aalami

First draft: July 27, 2008

This Technical Note explains the adjustments made automatically by the software, when a user edits a
rebar that is calculated by one of the Builder Platform programs, such as FLOOR-Pro.

It is important to know that the program treats the “calculated” rebar differently from “user defined”
rebar. A “user defined” rebar is referred to as “base reinforcement,” such as top or bottom mesh
reinforcement, or individual bars that may have been defined by the user.

The base reinforcement will remain unchanged. It will contribute to resists all the sections that interrupt
it. For each design section, the contribution of a “base reinforcement” depends on the angle it makes to
the design section. The largest contribution is when the design section is normal to the reinforcement.
When the angle between a base reinforcement and a design section is not normal, the program
considers the component of the force normal to the section to be effective.

The treatment for calculated reinforcement is different. Refer to Fig. 1-(a). The figure shows the plan of
a floor system with a design strip and its associated design sections.

(i) Plan of floor system showing a support line, design strip

and design sections

(ii) Plan showing a selected design section and the calculated rebar

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(c) Plan showing a selected design section and user adjusted rebar

FIGURE 1 ADJUSTMENT OF COMPUTED REBAR

After calculating the reinforcement needed for each of the design section of a design strip, the program
selects the largest area and the extent where the reinforcement is necessary and reports it as
“calculated” reinforcement in the manner shown in part (b) of the figure.

The reinforcement reported by the program is:

1. Normal to the design section. This is parallel to the support line.

2. On each side of the design sections, the length of the bar reported extends to the last design
section where rebar is needed. These are referred to in the diagram as “extents.”
3. If a user changes the orientation of a reported rebar, as shown in part (c ) of the figure, the
program makes the following adjustments.

a. The area of the reinforcement is changed, such as to retain the component of the force
normal to the original design sections unchanged.
b. The length of the bar is adjusted to elongate it to the original extent lines of the rebar.

4. The calculated rebar is associated with a single design strip as indicated above. It is important
to note that the contribution of the calculated rebar to other design strips is not accounted for by
the program. This is based on the understanding that in the general case the design strips are
normal to one another and there is no contribution from one to the orthogonal direction.
However, in irregular support layouts this is not the case. The reinforcement for each support
line is defined separately and reported as computed reinforcement. If support lines are not
orthogonal, the contribution of from one direction to the other is not considered. This is a
conservative treatment.

If a user wishes to have the contribution of “computed” reinforcement from one direction to be
considered for another support line that is not orthogonal to the first, the user must change the status of
the “computed” rebar to “base reinforcement.” Contribution of “base reinforcement” is accounted for,
wherever a section crosses the reinforcement.