135 The mission of the structural engineering department was to design the structure of a single level office building, placed on top of the existing office building. The structure had to be economic and functional. The erection of the building had to be quick, with a minimum of inconveniences for the employees working in the existing office. The architect did not accept any diagonal truss members in the facades. After studying several options, the team chose for a steel frame structure, with two longitudinal main frames, and four transverse frames. The beams of the transverse frames, whose eight columns are carrying the whole building, support the steel beams of the longitudinal frames. The first floor and the roof are designed as mixed steel plate – concrete floors on transverse steel beams, in order to reduce the weight of the structure, but keeping enough mass to ensure a good thermal response of the building. The new building has a length of 56.70 m, and a width of 13.50 m. The span (16.00 m) and the overhang (4.00 m) of the longitudinal beams were considerable. Horizontal stability in both directions had to be ensured by the framework. The total height of the structure had to be minimized, as well as the cost of the steel structure. Esthetical demands and the material used in the facades permitted only small displacements. The best approach for us was to use the powerful and easy to handle SCIA•ESA PT software to build an accurate 3D model of the structure. The tools in the section manager of the software permitted us to design some special sections (cross columns in the facades, build up sections in the transverse frames). The steel check and the optimisation module allowed us to reduce the weight of the structure. Displacements were easy to check. Some minor changes could be brought into the model on a very short notice. The design of the joints is not yet executed, because the steel constructor is not known yet, and his vision must be taken into account. The use of SCIA•ESA PT allowed us to strongly reduce the time and effort needed to design, in an accurate way, for a not so common steel frame structure. Office building Vanhaerents Office building Vanhaerents The mission of the structural engineering department was to design the structure of a single level office building, placed on top of the existing office building. The structure had to be economic and functional. The team chose for a steel frame structure, with two longitudinal main frames, and four transverse frames. The beams of the transverse frames, whose eight columns are carrying the whole building, support the steel beams of the longitudinal frames. The first floor and the roof are designed as mixed steel plate – concrete floors on transverse steel beams, in order to reduce the weight of the structure, but keeping enough mass to ensure a good thermal response of the building. The span (16.00 m) and the overhang (4.00 m) of the longitudinal beams were considerable.
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