It would be really nice to have a Beam on Elastic Foundation option. I often use a spreadsheet that I got off of SteelTools to find the shear and moments. But it would be really handy to have that incorporated into ClearCalcs. I often use it for slabs, and one thing that is really helpful is to be able to define the reinforcing on a per unit width basis, i.e. in2/ft as opposed to a bar size and spacing.
Hey @ZaneWells welcome to Blueprint! We’ve actually got an analysis module for beams on elastic foundations
NOTE: There’s currently a bug in the free-body diagram. The spring reaction shows up scaled by a factor of 0.3048 (1ft / 1m). The results (bending moment, shear, etc) we provide are however accurate. We’re working to fix that.
Let me know if you have any questions!
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Thanks @Igerin for the information. There are a few bugs with it that I am noticing.
The Shear and Moment diagrams aren’t necessarily smooth, which they should be unless there is a point load at that location.
Hi @ZaneWells thanks for you message again.
I asked my colleague who’s a specialist in FEA. He said that if you have spring supports this is expected due to FEA discretization. To his knowledge, and from some quick searching of academic papers, there is no such thing in FEA as a mathematically-stable beam element with a continuous lateral spring.
In case of discontinuities due to triangular loading, then that will be fixed in the next couple months, after we upgrade our FEA code.
Either way, the results are still accurate - they’re just discretized.
I hope that clarifies, otherwise, please let us know 