Steel design aid (AISC 360-22) - sharing the tool 2

[RattlinBog]

Over the last two years, I developed a steel beam-column design aid according to AISC 360-22 for my M.S. civil engineering non-thesis project. The design aid (built in Excel) can be used to analyze and design shapes with original, reduced/corroded, and reinforced/built-up section properties.

My intent is to share the tool publicly so other practicing structural engineers can use it. I was thinking of sharing it on steeltools.org. My grad advisor agrees with this plan.

This might be an odd question, but could there be any risks or unintended consequences I should be aware of before sharing a design tool for free, public use? I'm not too worried about it somehow coming back to bite me, but I suppose there's always the risk of someone misusing or modifying the tool and causing inaccuracies. Perhaps someone could also "steal" it, call it their own, and try to sell it. Seems unlikely but any thoughts?

 

[alt0]

You could consider password-protecting the editing of any formula based cells to cut down on misuse.

 

[lexpatrie]

I wouldn't be too concerned with the overall liability (not that I'm a laywer) but you could borrow language from the Tomanovich spreadsheets or the bay analysis tool AISC put out a few years ago (dozens).

Professional Engineers are responsible for their own work, after all, and the work (even if incorrect) of their subordinates under their direct supervision and/or responsible charge, if they use a spreadsheet they don't understand, or dont check the results for plausibility, that's on them (NIH has some justification in this field, after all) and there's perhaps a body of existing disputes between engineers and software suppliers, though I really doubt anything got past summary judgement. Any attempt to assign product liability to software is pretty difficult as far as I know.

The reality of most of these tools is they languish online and since they are all stand alone, they don't get too many downloads. The Tomanovich wind calculation spreadsheets are an exception, I see those a lot, particularly in forensics for whatever reason. But it only does 5 mile per hour increments so .. shrug. That's a different discussion...

If nobody shares, nobody can build on the existing body of knowledge. We already struggle to educate the newer engineers on lessons learned, incorporate new research and failure findings into "new work" (see Petroski), so it's worth doing. I feel like OpenSees is kind of the culmination of dozens of researchers over the years building on the code base. So maybe the open source has a chance.

 

[RattlinBog]

I'll likely protect the formulas but without a password to prevent accidental modifications but to still allow folks to update the spreadsheet intentionally when newer editions of AISC 360 come out.

I think the only small concern I had was somehow taking on risk/liability if someone were to use the design aid incorrectly, or if there was still a mistake in it that I didn't catch. Like you said lexpatrie, maybe I could add a cover sheet with some disclaimers. I'll be done with the project and my report in the next month, so I'll plan to think about that as I finish up.

I'm not expecting a lot of usage of the sheet, but even if it helps a dozen engineers, it'll be worth it! I'll certainly continue to use it in my career. The tool isn't going to handle every aspect of steel design known to man, but I think it's helpful nonetheless.

Once I upload it to steeltools.org, I'll plan to update with a link on eng-tips, too. A sneak peak below:

 

[Cpw628]

I’m commenting to ask if you can update us if/when it gets published. I would be interested to see if it would be useful for my work. I’d also be willing to look over it before you publish to see if I can spot anything major

 

[RattlinBog]

Cpw629, Yes, that's the plan. Thanks for the offer, but I'll wait until I'm done in a few weeks to upload/publish it. I'd rather not have a draft floating around in the wild.

I already have a couple people checking it, and I also rebuilt the entire design aid in Mathcad to verify every equation. Also checked it with RisaSection and Risa-3D results.