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Discussion - Mill Building Design Procedure - JOHN F. BAKOTA

The discusser agrees with the paper's observation about the lack of systematic information on mill building design. The discusser recommends an upper limit of 200 feet for the spacing of expansion joints to safely ignore thermal stresses. Expansion joints are also expensive and can cause roof leaks, so their location affects wall and roof bracing design. The discusser refers to previous papers discussing effective column length and buckling loads, concluding that columns tied at the top by roof trusses can be designed to act together to resist overloads on one column. The discusser hopes other consultants will contribute more papers on mill building design.

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Tiago Castelani
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105 views

Discussion - Mill Building Design Procedure - JOHN F. BAKOTA

The discusser agrees with the paper's observation about the lack of systematic information on mill building design. The discusser recommends an upper limit of 200 feet for the spacing of expansion joints to safely ignore thermal stresses. Expansion joints are also expensive and can cause roof leaks, so their location affects wall and roof bracing design. The discusser refers to previous papers discussing effective column length and buckling loads, concluding that columns tied at the top by roof trusses can be designed to act together to resist overloads on one column. The discusser hopes other consultants will contribute more papers on mill building design.

Uploaded by

Tiago Castelani
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discussion

fortunate, since an accurate stress distribution in any


Building Design Procedure three-dimensional enclosure subjected to temperature
gradients is extremely complex. From the design stand-
Paper by JOHN F. BAKOTA
(4th Quarter 1977) point, therefore, the discusser would like to recommend the
upper limit on the spacing of expansion joints as 200 ft.
With this limitation, the thermal stresses can be safely
Discussion by A n a n d B. G o g a t e ignored.
On the other hand, expansion joints are expensive and
T h e discusser concurs with M r . Dakota's observation re- are a potential source of roof leakage, which must be con-
garding the lack of systematic information on the design of sidered. Incidentally, the location of true expansion joints
mill buildings in text books. One of the main reasons for also affects the design of wind bracing, and the discusser
this situation is that Consulting Engineers, who have the has found on many projects that this fact was not fully re-
expertise in this field, do not have the time to write text- alized in the location and proportioning of the wall bracing
books. This discussion is aimed to add a few remarks based and diaphragm bracing in the roof system.
on the discusser's experience of about two decades of
Consulting Engineering.
A " m u s t " in the list of references on the design of mill SIDESWAY AND COLUMN STABILITY
buildings is the pioneering book written by the late Milo In regard to effective length of framed columns and the
S. Ketchum^ in 1903. This book was the very bible of steel benefits derived by rotating the axes of adjacent columns
building design about sixty years ago. During the discus- the discusser would like to refer to the papers by Yura^ and
ser's employment with one of the major steel fabricating
Zweig^ and the discussion of Yura's paper by Gogate."^
firms in 1966, this old book proved to be very valuable; it
These papers conclude that for a safe lower bound the total
provided more information on the design of mill buildings
buckling load of a rigid frame with an infinitely stiff hori-
than any modern text book then available.
zontal member (a roof truss with bottom chord extensions
A reasonable argument is given in Ketchum's book as very nearly fulfills this requirement)^ equals approximately
to why a mill building constituting a single span roof truss the sum of the buckling loads of each frame column. In
with knee braces, and supported on hinged base columns,
other words, two columns tied at the top with bottom chord
can be treated as a frame for lateral load resistance. T h i s
extensions of the roof truss would act together in such a way
method has been used ever since by designers with no re-
that an overload of one column (less than the Euler Load)
grets. Even a recent paper by Zweig^ has recommended full
can be justified on the basis of a smaller load on the other
frame action in design of buildings with bottom chord ex-
column. Yura's^ inelastic G concept and an iterative pro-
tension of roof trusses into supporting columns.
cedure to obtain a modified AT-factor for such columns is
also a major contribution towards economical design of
SPACING OF EXPANSION JOINTS AND
column grids where loads (like crane loads) create an excess
THERMAL STRESSES
load at one or two adjacent columns at a given time only.
T h e effect of thermal stresses becomes pronounced when Finally the discusser hopes that other Consultants will
thermal expansion is restrained. Expansion joints, when share their knowledge through papers such as M r . Bakota's
detailed and spaced adequately, minimize thermal ex- in the coming years.
pansion restraints. Consequently, there is less need to ac-
count for the negligible thermal stresses. Indeed this is very REFERENCES
1. Ketchum, Milo S. General Specification for Steel Frame Mill
Anand B. Gogate is Senior Structural Engineer, Elgar Brown
Buildings 1903, {Retitled ''Steel Mill Buildings'' in 1932
Consulting Engineers, Worthington, Ohio.
and published by McGraw-Hill Co.)

75
SECOND QUARTER/1978
2. Zweigy Alfred Discussion of "Column Stability Under Elastic
Supports" by T. R. Higgins AISC Engineering Journal, Vol.
2, No. 3 July 1965, pp. 105-106.
3. Yura, Joseph A. The Effective Length of Columns in Un-
braced Frames AISC Engineering Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2,
April 1971, pp. 37-42.
4. Gogate, Anand B. Discussion of "The Effective Length of
Columns in Unbraced Frames" by Yura AISC Engineering
Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 1971, pp. 110-111.

76

ENGINEERING JOURNAL/AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF STEEL CONSTRUCTION

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