PontiEC4

Software for the design of steel-concrete and orthotropic steel decks

Supply, Support and Collaboration

PontiEC4

Software for the design of steel-concrete composite decks that can be used with any finite element solver, the design stresses for each construction phase must be provided in a format compatible with Excel©, a wizard for exporting stresses in the format required by PontiEC4 is available in LUSAS . In addition to the supply and the support of PontiEC4, Alhambra srl can provide other types of partnership according to your needs in the design of steel-concrete composite decks.

We do the project together:

– Supply and assistance of PontiEC4 and partnership in the development of the project

We do the project:

– Drafting of the project by Alhambra srl with or without graphics

All modalities have been successfully tested.

Summary Data Sheet

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Detailed Data Sheet

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About PontiEC4

PontiEC4 carries out comprehensive calculations for multiple sections on steel or steel/composite bridge decks to the Eurocodes, allowing otherwise time-consuming and error-prone manual design calculations to be carried out efficiently.

Perform rapid design calculations covering ULS bending, stress, shear and interaction; SLS stress, web breathing and fatigue checks for main members and connectors.
Consider multiple sections with different properties (haunches, stiffeners, etc), and also bolted connections.
Output results in tabbed dialogs that visually show values that pass or fail.
Easily create graphs and a report containing all input data and output with references to the Eurocode clauses.

Software has been developed and validated according to:

EUROCODE 3 and 4 – Guidance book – Application to steel-concrete road bridges – Sétra July 2007
Commentary and worked examples to EN 1993-1-5 “Plated structural elements” JRC Scientific and Technical Report – October 2007
Design of Plated structures – ECCS Eurocode Design Manual – 2010

Core Characteristics

Material

The properties of concrete and steel are defined in this window, steel structural libraries from EN 10025 are available. Input is completed by the short and long-term modular ratios and by the imposed shrinkage strain in the slab. Additional dialogs support the user in defining the equivalent damage factors for fatigue checks.

Design Forces

The forces and moments can be entered in the input tables or easily imported from an Excel file. Forces and moments must be organized by construction phase, for each design combination there are four sets of forces and moments, where the effects of bending and shear are maximized and minimized.

Graphs

All the results (utilization ratios, stresses in the structural components, effective width of the slabs, shear flows, etc.) can be viewed through versus the distance of sections from the start of the beam. These graphs describe the results in all sections and can be included in the report to represent the structure behavior.

Geometry

Best approach to PontiEC4 is to check a single longitudinal beam; geometry of different segments is defined in the dialog and their position along the beam is managed by the value of the X coordinates of sections to be checked in that segment; segments with a skew web, variable height and the presence of longitudinal stiffeners both on the web and on the flanges are allowed. Segments and sections are shown in a tree viewer.

Results in detail

Checks consider Class 4 carrying out a classification of the section on the basis of the geometric characteristics of the individual sub components and on the basis of the NEd, Med values. Detailed results presentation allow the user to easily verify all the calculations. A dedicated tab is available for each type of check, the details of the calculation for any selected cross section and design combination are reported.

Bolted joints

Bolted Joints

A wide range of bolted joint types is available, with trapezoid or rectangular plates, and normal or staggered bolt arrangement. PontiEC4 returns the checks of all the components (profile, plates, bolts) in the Ultimate, Serviceability and Fatigue Limit States; a graphic representation of the connection is available in the dialog and in dxf format.

Effective width

The effective width of slab and flanges is calculated starting from the length of spans, and automatically applied to all the cross sections to check according to their X coordinate.

Results Summary

Four tables summurize the results of all checks. By clicking on the column header the utilization ratio is sorted in descending order. Failed checks, highlighted also with red characters, are so easily identified.

Report

Automatic reports can be drawn up in rtf format, by selecting the calculation sections deemed most significant and the desired verification chapters. It is possible to automatically identify the checks whose utilization ratio exceed a certain reference threshold defined by the user. Reports are available for all verifications, including bolted joints and short/long term mechanical properties of concrete.

Design checks and results output

ULS, SLS, fatigue checks and other results

Section properties
Primary (isostatic) effects of shrinkage and temperature change
Creep and shrinkage coefficients (EN 1992-1-1, App B)
Classification of sections (EN 1993-1-1, Table 5.2)
Ultimate bending check for Class 1 & 2 sections (EN 1993-1-1, 6.2.5)
Stress checks for Class 3 and Class 4 sections (EN 1993-1-5, Section 4)
Ultimate shear and web buckling (EN 1993-1-5, Section 5)
Bending-shear interaction (EN 1993-1-5, Section 7)
SLS stress checks (EN 1994-2, 7.2.2 (5) and EN1993-2, 7.3)
SLS web breathing check (EN1993-2, 7.4)
Reinforced concrete crack checks (EN 1994-2, 7.4.2)
ULS, SLS and fatigue checks for connectors (EN 1994-2, 6.6 and 6.8)
ULS, SLS bolted connections (EN 1993-1-8)
Fatigue checks for both structural steel and reinforcement components (EN 1993-1-9, EN 1994-2, EN 1993-2)
Transverse and longitudinal stiffener checks (EN 1993-1-5, 9.2.1 and 9.3.3)

Check results are available in detail for any section and any load combination through a multi-tabbed dialog and as graphs of utilization ratio in all sections along the beam into analysis

Section Optimisation

Section optimisation can be carried out by editing the geometry/material data and then viewing how the changes have affected the results. If required, the revised properties can be re-exported to Finite Element software to carry out a final iteration and check.