Design of Steel Structures with CFS-infill Walls and BIM Applications

Abstract

The construction industry has been at the epicenter of the development of modern nations. Good infrastructure accompanied by robust and quality construction provides a stable platform for growth. Steel as a building material has been used for centuries and it has its inherent advantages over other material forms. It has been considered a basis for modernization and its practical manifestation can be seen in the developed world. However, steel construction has not been adopted as extensively by the developing nations due to reservations and some intrinsic problems such as availability of material, less expertise in the field, etc. Moreover, owing to the economic, sustainability and technical needs of the modern-day construction it was also visualized to make the structure as light as possible to take the inherent advantages to the maximum. Considering the modern trends in the field and existing knowledge base, our group chose to undertake a project in the domain of steel structures. As a case study a typical office building in Riyadh, KSA was chosen for further deliberation. Contemporary commercially available tools i.e., SAP2000 and Autodesk Revit were utilized for the identification and design of critical sections and to solve any discrepancies. After the initial design various methods were studied to make the structure as light as possible. Based on our existing knowledge, studying of contemporary designs and literature and suggestions of our advisor, we selected CFS infill walls as a solution. Incorporating the solution lead to our final design which was reached upon by doing numerous iterations to achieve optimum design efficiency. Being a relatively new concept in the local industry we were able to learn something new from this endeavor and further research in the subject would surely bring a change in the industry.