Designing with plastic

[vmirat]

I have a project to design an elevated platform using plastic floor grate, plastic guardrails, and plastic structural supports. This will be used to gain access in front of high voltage electrical switch gear. Anyone know of code references or industry design standards for designing with plastic?

 

[SlideRuleEra]

If your are referring to fiberlass reinforced plastic, such as this

http://www.strongwell.com/

the manufacturer's design manual is most likely the best guide.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

 

[miecz]

See thread507-188543. From what I can gather, there is no national design standard for FRPs. Best approach seems to be to write a performance spec and have the vendor design (and sign and seal)the support system.

 

[vmirat]

After I posted this question, I found a thread with a link to Strongwell. Unfortunately, Strongwell's product, Extren, is proprietary. Since I work for The Government, I can't spec this product without justifying a sole source provider. Strongwell's design data is specific to Extren. About the only thing I can do is what jmiec stated about a performance spec. Seems a shame though. I see lots of applications for this stuff and I would like to be able to have the freedom to design it myself. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Oceania]

You will find all pultrusions that are offered by Strongwell, Creative, Exel, etc. are all based on a very similar performance standard (It is rumoured that most pultrusions are based on the Strongwell design) although Asian supplies can be variable. However you can apply general international design standards for platforms, it is usually how you apply these to the orthotropic nature of composites that is important. Other than that you can use the Eurocomp code for design, and the new ISO standard for the mechanical properties of pultrusions, I also believe there is also a ASIC code of practice that also covers the use of composites and this can be combined with the UBC. The easiest is to put out the job to tender to a fabricator and get them to supplier engineers calcs and references to support their design. FRP grating is a commodity product and pultruded structural beams are common place so to get something made should be pretty straight forward.