Selecting building material and framing system is determined by load bearing capacity, functionality, economy and wanted lifespan. The framing system should have adequate bending characteristics to support architecture style of the building and non-structural elements. Frames are fundamental skeleton of the building created using wood, steel, reinforced concrete or prefabricated materials.
About reinforced concrete, you can also see our different article talks about Why concrete is reinforced with steel.
Light weight wood frames are most widely used for the construction of 2 to 3, single or multiple residential apartment. Structurally it’s a repetitive bond of wood joists on wood studs. All wood buildings are designed in compliance with the International One and Two Residential Building Code. Commercial and industrial wood building normally have larger floor spans along with few retaining walls.
Steel building include of repetitive framing of steel beams and columns. The beam-column connections are totally designed like a moment connection withstand laterla loads. Lateral forces are transmitted by steel decking to the moment resisting frames. These frames could be placed almost any place in the structure. Steel structures are usually more flexible than wood buildings in their design and offers advantages of fire resistance, offsite fabrication of elements and inexpensive.
Steel structures composed of light frame are often pre-engineered and fabricated with solid frames in the transverse orthogonal design. These frams provide greatest strength when columns and beams are built up of light steel plates.
Precast Concrete Frame building consists of floor and roof decking made up of precast concrete members for much better earthquake resistance. Precast concrete columns and girders assist the decking system along with reinforced steel to interconnect these elements. Higher strength and capacity of these connections assist resist lateral loads as wanted in main seismic upheavals.
The building structural engineer need to ensure their designs meet wanted load, safety, architectural, serviceability and functionality criteria. It will easily endure massive live and dead loads along with climate changes and natural disasters.
