Sunday, July 5, 2009

Space Frame Design

Rules of Thumb for Space Frame Design

It is important for the architect to work side by side with the engineer when considering a space frame system. While the engineer normally sizes up the structural members after the architect has designed the structure, his/ her role must be more interactive to ensure that each design decision takes full advantage of a space frame system while managing costs. Simply changing the modular sizes of the space frame components could have a huge impact on material costs.

Typically, space frames are not as economical for spanning systems under 7-10 metre in length.

For determining depth of space frame;

a. Use ratio of 1:12 depth to span for a 1-way space frame.
b. Use ratio of 1:15 depth to span for a 2-way space frame.
c. Use ratio of 1:18 depth to span for a 3-way space frame.

1 comment:

  1. why the ratio doesn't depend on the span length ?. what i mean is, why it seems that if i wanna do a 30 m span for 2-way space frame i would use (1:15 ration), and if i wanna do a 120 m span for 2-way space frame i would use (1:15 ratio). It is weirdly the same, how does that work .. 30 m span has the same depth ratio as 120 m span !!

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