Butler Rib II Wall Panels

[OHIOMatt]

I am evaluating a rather large (500k square feet) pre-engineered metal building. I am struggling to understand the lateral stability of one of the side walls. Is it possible that Butler used their Butler Rib II panels as shear panels? If so, does anyone have a suggestion as to the capacity?

 

[JedClampett]

Butler undoubtedly used some kind of X rods or bracing to stabilize the walls. I wouldn't put it past one of the shadier outfits to try a stunt like that, but Butler is not one of them. These pales aer atched to each other using sealant. Not very structural.
Now someone could of removed the X bracing. But that's not the design.

 

[jimstructures]

Butler primarily used X rods, Windposts & Portal Frames to provide bracing, but in a few cases they would use Butlerib II panels with substantially higher numbers of fasteners to provide shear panel bracing of smaller structures. However in a building as large as 500,000 sq. ft. it would have been very, very unlikely. This is a building which is approximately, 700' square. I would say not a chance that it was done with shear wall bracing made of Butlerib II panel.

There are some big guns from Butler who watch over this site and they may comment.

How tall are the eaves and what is the roof slope?

Jim

 

[OHIOMatt]

Thanks for the insight Jed and Jim, you are confirming my assumptions.

The eave height is 28', the roof slope is 1/4" on 12". The building dimensions are 875' x 600'. The rigid frames run in the 600' direction.

 

[ajh1]

Butler will occasionally use Butlerib as a shear panel, but only for small buildings and only on endwalls typically. As mentioned above, there is typically going to be bracing of some sort in the sidewalls. I'm wondering whether this is building has truss purlins in the roof plane. If so, and the building is from the 1970-1985 era, it may be what we termed a Landmark building frame scheme. That concept originally had large fixed base endwall columns that took all of the longitudinal force as a cantilever column system without requiring bracing in the primary portion of the building. That was later supplanted by normal rod bracing in the roof and either x-bracing or portal frames in the walls.
More details on the specific building would be helpful. You might consider getting in touch with our Annville, PA engineering office and they could further assist you in understanding the structure.

 

[OHIOMatt]

ajh1, thanks so much. I have always looked at Butler as one of the leaders of the industry. I figured that I was missing something.

 

[beam4u]

Check out AISI S213-07. They might have some guidance on metal panels taking shear.

f

 

[jimstructures]

Another possibility to consider is Fixed Base End-walls. All of the end wall columns or many of them (i.e. both end-walls) have fixed base base plates which makes the end-wall columns all wind-posts and thus braces the end-wall columns against translation at the top and eliminates the need for braced bays.

This is a relatively common feature in Butler Landmark buildings. It does result in fairly heavy and big foundations under each of these columns. Butler published an entire Foundation design Guide to, among other things, design these foundations.

Butler no longer supports this feature in their Landmark buildings.

This condition would result in no braced bays at all in a building of this size.

Jim

 

[jimstructures]

OhioMatt,

I would recommend looking into Butler's fixed base endwalls, as they were a common solution (although not as common as braced bays) to the problem of how to brace a big building longitudinally. If your building is a Landmark type building it will probably have long bays (> 30') and truss purlins (similar to Bar Joists) for roof structurals. It may also have intermediate sidewall columns, which have king post bracing at the tops to tie into the bracing system and to support the top of non-axial load bearing columns. Does any of this sound familiar?

Jim