Projeto de uma escada helicoidal em concreto armado: comparação entre dois métodos de análise estrutural

Abstract

In the field of Civil Engineering, a few building elements in concrete occur so often in structural projects that they ended up sparking the development of uncountable design methods that are taught and studied worldwide. These elements being beams, columns and slabs. The objective of this paper is to study an element that has a degree of complexity above these habitual members, the helical beam. The beam studied in the paper works as a support member for a staircase. In order to design such an intricate element as the helical beam, the paper intends to compare empirical and computational methods and their results. The computational methods are a constant presence in the daily life of the Structural Engineer of the 21th century, as they frequently need to resort to using software applications to design both simple and intricate structures. These methods develop solutions to problems of heightened difficulty by solving equation systems and matrices. The empirical methods, on the other hand, try to approach these problems by the way of physical and mathematical approximations and generalizations. Comparing the helical beam by both an empirical and a computational method, it was possible to briefly analyze the significance of both types of design to the area of Structural Engineering.