Comprehensive Foundation Design

Are you tired of designing one footing at a time? STAAD Foundation Advanced presents a total foundation project design environment.

The program integrates all common footing designs by having two layers of data: local and global. Local data is used by an individual footing type, while global data—like column positions, support reactions, Bearing Capacity, Load Factors, and Self Weight Inclusion— are shared among all footings.

The program includes a myriad of foundation configurations such as spread (isolated) footings, strip (combined) footings, pile caps (including 3 pile arrangement and multilayered circular arrangement), octagonal footings, strap footings (used for equipment foundation) and mat foundations. In addition, the program includes vertical vessel, heat exchanger, and ground water tank foundation (with ring beam) and specialized footing types such as drilled pier and dead man anchor guy foundations. Beam footing is available for Indian users.

The program supports multiple design codes: ACI-2005, ASCE705, PIP 650,NBCC05 (Canadian), BS 8110 (British), IS-456-2000 (Indian), AS 3600 (Australian), CSA A23-3.04 (Canadian), EN 1992-1-1-2004 (Eurocode 2), and GB 50007 (Chinese).

Mat foundation design includes both slab-on-grade and slab-on-piles. Even a beam-stiffened mat can be designed. Holes can be placed and analyzed accordingly. It helps you visualize and optimize footing design with different integrated footing design modules.

The program automatically detects slab areas out of contact with the soil and redistributes forces to other parts of the slab. The entities and the graphical representation of the mat foundation output—such as displacements, forces, and stresses—are shown using OpenGL for a realistic rendered view.

Advanced Mode for Plant Users

The plant mode can design different types of equipment foundations. Vertical vessels can be supported by square footing, octagonal footing, or either square or circular pilecap. Horizontal vessels—single or multiple—can be supported by two isolated footings, a combined footing, or isolated footings connected by a strap footing. The plant mode supports U.S. and IS code, as well as the PIP guidelines. The program can automatically generate seismic and wind loads (based on IS or U.S. codes). The design of octagonal and square pedestals is also possible. To help plant users, the general mode includes octagonal and strap modules so that multiple footings can be designed in a single environment. This allows the general mode to be used to manage equipment and structural foundations in a single project.

A new module for tank foundations is included in the plant mode. It is extremely helpful for designing ground water tank foundations supported by annular ring beams. This module can generate wind and seismic loads (even considering sloshing effect).

Completely Integrated Design with STAAD.Pro

STAAD Foundation Advanced is tightly integrated with STAAD.Pro—a leading product in structural analysis and design—with bidirectional data transfer.

You can open any STAAD.Pro file and import all column positions, support reactions, and so on. It even keeps track of changes in the STAAD.Pro model. If the superstructure gets updated, you can easily merge new output results within your STAAD Foundation Advanced file.

STAAD Foundation Advanced is a must have for any STAAD.Pro user. It saves a tremendous amount of time and reduces errors.

The program gives existing STAAD users option to exclude or include any loading or support/change load type and so on directly when any file is being exported to STAAD Foundation.

Detailed Output Option

STAAD Foundation can automatically generate design reports (referred to as calculation sheet) that are very comprehensive and descriptive and are based on critical loadcases. But for foundation projects where a large number of loads are being considered (as is common for plant users), often it becomes necessary for the designer to see the design summary for all loadcases. Therefore a new option called “Detailed Output” is included that can generate a summary report for all loadcases and can help you to optimize the design or track the reason of failure.

Integration with Microsoft Office Excel Spreadsheet Software

STAAD.Pro users who like to use the STAAD Editor will find this feature useful, but it is intuitive enough for any user to find helpful. STAAD Foundation uses an XML format that can be opened using Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software. STAAD Foundation project files can also be exported to spreadsheet files and vice versa (through the use a specially formatted spreadsheet proved with the program). So a designer can link their own spreadsheet with STAAD Foundation very easily with the help of this feature.

Incorporates Rigid and Flexible Methods of Design

STAAD Foundation Advanced includes both rigid and flexible methods of foundation design.

Spread footings, combined, strip, and single column pile caps are designed using rigid methods to match the steps of a design engineer. It also has fully capable FEM analysis where you can model a simple footing or large mat. It provides a sophisticated and accurate tool to analyze and design mat foundations for multiple regions with different soil properties, thickness, holes, and beams.

Provides Auto-Meshing and Physical Loading for Mat Foundations

We understand the frustration and time you might face in converting a physical mat into thousands of analytical components in order to do a sophisticated FEM analysis. STAAD Foundation Advanced eliminates this step by creating analytical components with auto-meshing.

However, the output and design results are based on physical entities like slabs and beams. You can automatically convert local axis analysis results to a global (or user-defined) axis system. This not only saves time, it reduces errors significantly.

FEM Analysis for Accurate and Economical Designs

STAAD Foundation Advanced has a very unique and innovative technique for mat design that takes full advantage of FEM analysis, which can provide for an accurate and economical design. It designs the slab at thousands of discrete points taking into considerations unlimited number of load cases. This unique approach to creating user-defined reinforcing zones helps you to visualize and optimize the reinforcement requirement. You can even select a section on any part of the mat and design reinforcement along that cut line. Punching shear checks are also included at column location.

This version offers an additional tool to check slab moment capacity for a given reinforcement layout.

For users who prefer to follow conventional strip method, STAAD Foundation provides a unique option called “Cut slab by a line” where you can track shear force and bending moment diagrams at that strip and design accordingly.

Easily Handles Complex Foundations

No matter how complex your foundation is, STAAD Foundation Advanced can handle it. Whether it is rectangular, complex polygonal, circular, or elliptical, STAAD Foundation Advanced has the tools to model any shape.

In addition, you can model both regular and irregular column lines. The sophisticated mesh generation algorithm allows you to create holes (cut-outs) and inner regions with different thicknesses to simulate pedestals. Loads automatically transfer from the top of the pedestal to the base of the foundation. You can specify an unlimited number of load cases for analysis and design.

The Foundation Toolkit mode is provided to address the needs of special footing types like drilled pier and dead man anchor guy foundation. Both modules can take multiple layers of both cohesive and cohesionless (or mixed type) soil.

Thorough Output Including Calculations

Since STAAD Foundation Advanced is developed by engineers, it understands an engineer’s need to review results by presenting a detailed calculation sheet.

STAAD Foundation Advanced lists all relevant code clauses with equations and calculated values. You can follow the method used in the program and feel confident with the results. Our calculation sheet is based on XML format so your clients can view the calculation with any Web browser even if they don’t have the software.

Detailed Drawings Directly from the Program

The program produces detailed drawings, general arrangement (GA) drawings, and footing schedule drawings. The detailed drawings include both plan and section drawings with rebar marks in both longitudinal and transverse directions. GA drawings are also provided and include all the footings designed in the project to scale with grid lines and grid marks. With the help of this drawing, you can check for mistakes—and the program actually marks all overlapped regions. For example, two isolated footings may overlap; and by utilizing the layout drawing, you can decide to design these as a combined footing. The footing schedule drawing produces a plan drawing along with a table with footing marks, dimension, and reinforcement.

All the drawings can be exported to either DWG or DGN formats for final production drawings.

Automatic Pile Arrangement

Pile arrangement can be a tedious task. However, STAAD Foundation Advanced includes a wide range of predefined pile arrangements to save you time. In addition, the program can automatically select the best possible pile arrangement for a given pile capacity. The BOCA standard is followed for predefined pile arrangements.

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