Steel Bridge Girder Design Software

[Kramer]

I am building structural engineer taking a graduate level steel bridge girder design class. We are using a very old shareware program (DOS based) to perform the analysis of the girders and then transferring the information into an EXCEL spreadsheet to plot the moment and shear envelopes. Is there a better, more up to date shareware program available to perform this analysis? We are using AASHTO LFD standards.

Thanks,
Kramer

 

[bridgebuster]

Try some state DOT websites. I recall that Florida DOT and Washington State DOT had analysis software available. Both use the LRFD code.

 

[ebn663]

Hi Kramer:

You could try a very powerful U.S. software called (Robot Millenium) and it's got a free version (Freeware). You can download it for free and have it activated by e-mail or by an 800 phone. Their website is:

http://www.robobat.com/usa/

I, myself, am currently using it for bridges and buildings design in my company here in Canada and it is, of course, useful in USA. Good luck with the software.

Another option is to download a software called (Visual Analysis, version 5.5) and it's a very user-friedndly software. I used it before in a consulting firm in Ontario, Canada and it proved to be very handy and easy to learn. You can download it free for a month and if you like it you could buy it (website address is:

http://www.iesweb.com/).

It's not as expensive as Robot Millenium.

Good luck.

 

[BradPL]

This gentleman has an outstanding spreadsheet for plotting shear and moment diagrams for multiple axles and continuous spans.

http://www.umoncton.ca/turk/logic.htm

This may come a little late for use in your project based on the original posting date but others may find it useful.