Scaffolding Design Software

[Phillip Hines]

I was hoping to get some input from engineers designing scaffolding.

What software are you using? Is there an industry standard software being used? Do you think STAAD is up for the challenge?

Thank you in advance for any input.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Welcome to Eng-Tips, I see this is your first post.

While I have never personally designed scaffolding, I do have some thoughts on the subject.

1) The analysis will be very simple. Any software capable of analyzing trusses should be able to handle it. For that matter, you may not even need software. Trusses are easy enough to do by hand, though I do prefer to use software even for simple things like this.
2) Connections will have to be checked by hand.
3) I'm sure there are industry specific things to consider...odd material grades, or how they're supported at their base. But, those shouldn't be too much to overcome.

 

[jjl317]

Having worked in the scaffold industry, many/most basic scaffold components have published load values, based on physical tests, so the analysis can be pretty straight-forward. For most applications, an excel spreadsheet will work fine, though I have also used MathCAD for presentation purposes. More robust analysis tools (RISA, Ram Elements, STAAD) might be helpful for some non-standard applications, including enclosed scaffolds, or more involved putlog (type of scaffold truss) applications. In my experience, it is rare that a true, basic material analysis (i.e. AISC) would be needed.

 

[Lomarandil]

I agree with the above.

If you are working for a scaffold manufacturer either optimizing the modular design or as an in-house engineer providing construction support, then yes, most finite element packages (including STAAD) would be capable of the analysis. I'm sure that some will had advantages over others, but I'm not well enough versed to comment much on that.

If you are working as a consultant or contractor's engineer, a lot of scaffolding is simple enough to be analyzed by hand or a fairly simple finite element model. Capacity calculations aren't really performed for the modular elements themselves, the engineers tend to rely on manufacturer's published working load limits. Specialty modular units require a lot of time to determine capacities in a robust way, and more basic units (say pipe and clamp style) are usually strongly influenced by the connections.

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just call me Lo.

 

[patswfc]

I use SCIA Engineer, but dont get involved in scaffolding design. They have a module specifically for the design of scaffolding which is meant to simulate the behavior of the couplers, etc., to get a more accurate analysis. Dont know how good it is or if other software packages have similar bolt on modules for scaffolding. If you google SCIA Engineer scaffolding, you'll find a link to a presentation on their youtube channel for more info. As for an industry standard package, i dont have a clue as not me line of work.

 

[m.nurh]

One of greatest challenge to design scaffolding is modelling semi-rigid connection. I think STAAD.Pro is capable to modelling the connection due to it has spring member release in its member specs feature. Another thing that important is imperfection of scaffolding. Offset feature on STAAD.Pro is enough I think for modelling imperfection scaffold geometry. To be honest, I haven't used STAAD.Pro for modelling scaffold but I am using it now for my project.