WINDLOAD

by Engineers' Compendium

The threat of wind loads puts the wind up most designers

To over-specify blows out the costs. To under-design can blow away the building. The answer is WINDLOAD. It gives you all the loads you need. Precisely! On twenty-seven load zones, each of which has six loads - that's 162 loads - in seconds. Plus frictional drag!

You have more important things to do ...

... but you don't want to neglect your client. If you take a guess at it, you may be over-specifying or under-designing. Why fret? The anser is right here.

The original Windows version of the program was commissioned by BHP Building Products when it introduced its new limit state span tables for cladding. If you don't know it, "BHP" is "The Big Australian" company.

Why did BHP get involved?

Because there is no point in having accurate span tables if the user doesn't get the loads right!

That's the raison d'etre of the program. Think about it. Could a smart lawyer prove negligence if you specified something without knowing what load it had to carry?

It's not difficult, but cumbersome

The science of wind loads is not like astrophysics, but for a busy practising engineer it's very cumbersome.

The basic wind velocity can be got from local records. To this must be applied multipliers for terrain, height, shielding, topography and importance. Having got the design velocity, there are internal and external pressure factors to determine the basic loads. Finally, we can apply coefficients for the twenty-seven zones to get the design loads. PHEW.

Don't Waste Time - Run The Program Now