Has anyone purchased or used the spreadsheets from this website? It looks to have quite a few spreadsheets with code references with the calculations. The author is Daniel T. Li.
Just curious....
How do you know it (the composite beam design) works well? Did you have some well known, or well worn, or trusted solutions to compare to? Or did you do a hand calc?
I have purchased several spreadsheets (steel brace connections / concrete shear walls etc) from Daniel T. Li and they all seem to work well. The results have all matched well with the hand calcs. The only draw back I have seen is the design is not always complete and the additional checks required are not mentioned in the spread sheet.
You're better off to write your own spreadsheet. The only way to verify the correctness of a spreadsheet is to verify each equation. A difficult task with excel as the formulations are so cryptic, as compared to mathcad, for instance. It is folly to think you can verify a spreadsheet, or any software, for that matter, by running a few example problems. By the time you're done deciphering the formulas in excel, you can write your own spreadsheet.