RKALC

WEB-BASED STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

Watch & Learn Register Subscribe LinkedIn

Latest on RKALC

- 18/8/2024
Parametric Design? No Problems!


- 10/8/2024
One Project at a Time


Deep Coupling Beam - How to Use

FEA Kalc Watch and Learn

- 6/8/2024
What does AI Think of FEAKalc?

Question: do you know FEAKalc?
Answer By ChatGPT
FEAKalc is a tool within the RKALC suite designed for structural engineers to perform finite element analysis (FEA) on 2D structures. It is particularly useful for analysing the structural behaviour of elements under various loading conditions, helping engineers to understand how different parts of a structure will respond to stresses and strains.
This tool allows users to model and analyse complex structures by breaking them down into smaller, manageable elements. The results can provide insights into displacements, stresses, and forces, aiding in the design and validation of structural components.
FEAKalc is integrated into the RKALC ecosystem, which means it works alongside other calculators in the suite to provide a comprehensive set of tools for structural analysis​
Answer By Gemini
Yes, I know about FEAKalc!
FEAKalc is a web-based application developed by RKALC for structural analysis. It's designed to be user-friendly and efficient, allowing users to analyse frames, trusses, and other structures quickly and easily.
Key features of FEAKalc include:

  • Ease of use: It's designed to be intuitive, even for those familiar with software like SAP or ETABS
  • Speed: FEAKalc is known for its rapid calculation times
  • Accessibility: As a web-based application, it can be accessed from any device with an internet connection.
  • Comprehensive: It handles a variety of structural analysis tasks.

  • - 4/8/2024
    Calculation Reports

    We are delighted to announce the rollout of detailed calculation reports across most of our web-based modules!

    What’s New?
    Our Column Module, STM Wall Module, Corbel Module and Coupling Beam STM Module now feature comprehensive calculation reports that adhere to the latest standards, ensuring accuracy and professional presentation . These reports include analyses, formatted tables, and insightful notes to support your engineering projects..

    Key Features:

    • Compliance with AS3600-2018: Our calculation sheets now follow the Australian Standard 3600-2018 guidelines, incorporating load-bearing capacity, moment-resisting capacity, and confinement provisions to ensure FRL structural integrity under the given load combination.
    • User-Friendly Design: The reports are designed with readability in mind. They feature clearly formatted tables and intuitive layouts, making it easier to understand and verify the calculations.
    • Enhanced Print Features: Print your reports with a professional layout, including a grid notebook background for better readability and notation.
    • Interactive Elements: Detailed tables for Weak Axis and Strong Axis analyses, Applied Forces, and Global Behaviour, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of your column’s performance.
    • Expert Notes: Valuable insights and notes on compliance and design considerations, ensuring you stay informed about the best practices and standards in column design.

    How to Access:
    Visit our Column Module and STM Wall Module and Coupling Beam STM Module and Corbel Module to explore the new features and generate your detailed calculation reports.

    Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements as we continue to improve our tools to support your engineering needs!

    - 28/7/2024
    RKALC Update

    A heartfelt thank you to our 400+ members in Australia and around the globe for your incredible support over the past two years.
    We’re excited to announce that RKALC has now transitioned to a paid model, offering you the flexibility to subscribe to the web application(s) of your choice.
    We’re currently offering a one-time subscription plan that’s valid for 30 days. You can select the apps you need and subscribe for just one month, with the option to renew if you’d like. Enjoy the convenience of no lock-in contracts or recurring payments with these plans. Plus, keep an eye out for future subscription options that will come with discounted rates.
    Please note, current prices apply only for the duration of your subscription.
    You can complete your purchase using your PayPal account or credit card, with all transactions securely processed through PayPal, the world’s leading payment gateway. Rest assured, we don’t store PayPal accounts or card details.
    Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to serving you with our enhanced offerings!
    Warm regards,
    The RKALC Team

    New members will receive a complementary 7 days welcome package with full access to the RKALC cloud-based applications.

    Happy RKalculations!

    - 1/4/2024
    GreenKALC is Out

    Our latest webapp, The GreenKALC, is out
    This is a unique piece of work enables you calculate the carbon footprint of your building. There are tables breaking down the building into sections, this makes it easy for you to fill in, and choose the right material to reduce cradle to gate emissions.
    Warm regards,
    The RKALC Team

    - 1/3/2024
    Q&A

    Welcome to our Q&A Page!
    This is the space for structural engineers to ask questions and answer others. We have added many questions for our members to share knowledge and trigger more discussions in the public. We are receiving questions and thought some might be shared to spread the knowledge


    RKALC Structural Engineering Apps




    FEAKalc

    This our latest and most advanced web-application for structural analysis, you can analyise any frame, truss, and anything in between. This is a rapid and super easy application, soon will include international sections.

    Access FEAKalc »

    GreenKALC

    GreenKALC is your tool to estimate the carbon footprint for your building. You can, using this app, work out the quantities and A1-to-A3 carbon emissions. Helps you reduce the impact on environment

    Access GreenKALC »

    RC Calculator

    Learn all there is to know about the concrete calculator, specially crafted for the Australian Standard AS3600-2018. This application is made to help expedite the process without compromising accuracy.

    Access RC Calculator »

    STM Calculator

    This is an absolutely amazing application, will help you rapidly design transfer beams / walls, using the strut-and-tie method to AS3600-2018. You can see how it generates state-of-art output in no time.

    Access STM Calculator »

    Steel Calculator

    The steel calculator is here! Say goodbye to paper catalogues or giant PDF files to find the properties and capacities of steel sections. This is a true time saver, made for the standard Australian sections

    Access Steel Calculator »

    Analysis Verifier

    This is all what you need for continuous beams / slabs in real life, or if you are working with a sophisticated software and need to get a feel of what it is doing! A great tool to verify software results, and a little bit more

    Access Analysis Verifier »

    TribKALC

    This is our new web that you will need to calculate tributary areas with graphical representation, only thing to do is to open pdf file of floor plan, and trace around slab edge, columns, and walls, click analyse (on the brain icon).

    Access TribKALC »

    CentresKALC

    This is our unique webapp that you will need to calculate Centres of Mass and Rigidity with graphical representation, only thing to do is to open pdf file of floor plan, and trace around slab edge, and walls, click on the brain icon.

    Access CentresKALC »

    PileGroupKALC

    This is our unique webapp comes with dynamic and easy to use graphics pad. It is waht you will need to estimate pile group reactions to vertical and lateral loads. Super fast and easy to use similar to its sister apps, TribKALC and CentresKALC.

    Access PileGroupKALC »

    MasonryKALC

    This is our latest webapp for the design of masonry walls to the Australian Standard AS3700-2018. Your can design walls made of clay bricks, concrete, light weight concrete, and calcium silicate. Design for axial, bending, shear, and fire

    Access MasonryKALC »





    Welcome to RKALC Blog


    The Tale of Two Building Developers:

    Navigating Urban Landscapes Through Architecture and Structural Engineering

    This article is inspired by Bill Baker's address to DTU University in 2015. You can watch the address here.

    Iris Bay Dubai

    The architecture, is the story of space and time, it is about fashion, colors, natural light, and nice views. It is also about a fresh breath of green and positive interfacing with the community, all of which pour in pride of owning an apartment in a landmark building.

    On the other hand, structural engineering is the language of architecture; it is the words or vocabulary through which architecture is written. Some of this "vocabulary" is quite eloquent and makes a powerful impact, as seen in the Sydney Opera House here in Sydney, or the Burj Dubai. Others stumble, like those rectangular apartment buildings we see everywhere, the majority of which are designed by nothing but greed. I am not quite sure if there is ever architecture in those other than complying dimensions or sometimes performance solutions. I only see rectangles stacking next to each other, above each other, to form giant rectangles, or sometimes trapezoids when the land has such shape.

    Let us face it, there is a huge need to grow, and a great demand by our communities to expand and aspire. At the same time, we live in a world of limited resources and increasing awareness of human's footprint on the environment and nature. That said, can we not agree on common grounds? And when I say "we," I mean us in the built environment, the architects with the developers at their back, and the structural engineers, the deliverers of the whole vision.

    Show More


    Peter Rice - An Engineer Imagines!

    Although I’ve been in the business of structural engineering for over two decades, and despite being a chartered member of IStructE, a UK accreditation body, I only knew about the Irish Structural Engineer, Peter Rice, a few years ago! I said to myself, alas! What am I doing? This rush in doing work and attempting to be up to speed with industry commitments made me miss great things… This dilemma of balancing between acquiring knowledge while servicing clients and employers keeps coming up along the way, and whenever I meet a great mentor or know about an inventive piece of work.


    Euler Load Image 1

    I remember experiencing similar feelings early on when I knew about Nervi, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Ove Arup, Frei Otto, and even some of the living superstars like Bill Baker and Robert Sinn, however, Peter Rice struck me the most!

    For those who don’t know him, it can be safely said that he was, and still, one of the greatest minds in structural engineering, a true thinker and compassionate human being who invented so many beautiful things that we take for granted.



    Show More

    To FEA or Not to Be!

    It would be good to start these reflections with the following quotes (Wilson, Jan 2002):

    [My freshman Physics instructor dogmatically warned the class "do not use an equation you cannot derive". The same instructor once stated that "if a person had five minutes to solve a problem, that their life depended upon, the individual should spend three minutes reading and clearly understanding the problem"..."With respect to modern structural engineering, one can restate these remarks as "do not use a structural analysis program unless you fully understand the theory and approximations used within the program"]

    It has been quite a while since starting my career; through which, I have attempted, or more precisely, life has taken me across a number of challenges, in a pursuit for engineering excellence that I hope would be reached one day. One of these dares is trying to track, or maybe confirm, the actual development in structural engineering, in light of the astronomical advancement of #CAD / #FEA and debate of responsibly deploying them. A debate usually witnessed among young and “older” professionals.

    Let us imagine a journey in time, no farther than the late 1970’s; maybe similar discussions on the analysis and design aids were, as well, very much on the table. .


    Euler Load Image 1
    Show More


    Reinforced Concrete Columns

    Designing columns is possibly the most repetitive task structural engineers undertake in their daily routine. When we have a column subject to combined axial and bending, one might ask the following questions:

  • How slender is this column?
    Slenderness of any column is the single most important parameter we should determine at the beginning of the design task. As a rule of thumb, if the column is braced, then a height to width ratio (or slenderness) under 15 should make an axially loaded column fail at a loading nearing the squash load, i.e., the capacity of the section. Whereas in unbraced floors, the height to width ratio should not be any greater than 10; otherwise, failure will happen quickly on buckling way before the section capacity is suffering.

  • Show More

    The Strut and Tie Method

    STM is a very efficient and simple way to represent the stress flow within a concrete element or parts of it that are under the D region category, where Bernoulli assumptions are not applicable. Some say that the use of this method goes back to the early 20th century, yes, some 120 years ago when concrete was a new thing, and engineers used to rely on their intuition and expectation of load path.

    STM was given several boosts between the sixties and early eighties when Schlaich et al. published guidance on the theory and given typical examples with load paths. Later, international codes started to implement and “regulate” it if you wish, to keep up with engineers, who always challenge the status quo.

    Show More


    Coupled Shear Walls

    First things first, as you read this post, please refer to Coupled Shear Wall calculator available at: See Link

    The issue of coupled shear walls is one of the most debated topics among structural engineers. It's not surprising to see five people with twenty different opinions, each of valid points. Ove #Arup once said on this:

    "The more you look, the more you see,
    And that's why experts disagree.
    For some look here, and some look there,
    But no one can look everywhere.
    For if they did, it seems to me
    That they would hardly be experts, you see.
    According to their point of view,
    What they say may well be true,
    But looking from another angle,
    We tend to get into a tangle.
    Which of the views is then correct?
    That is not easy to suspect.”


    Euler Load Image 1
    Show More


    To Double Curvature or Not?

    Clause 10.3.1 of the Australian Standard AS3600-2018 includes a very interesting stipulation on columns in relation to the ratio of M1/M2. This applies to normal columns found throughout the building height, which are typically subject to double curvature behaviors.
    According to the Standard, if the analysis moment is less than the minimum eccentricity moment about the respective direction or 5%DN*, the ratio above should be taken as negative. This means the column should be assumed to be subject to single curvature, making it more conservative due to the high moment magnifier (δb).
    The logic behind this stipulation is that there may be inaccuracies or errors during installation or due to pattern loading. As a result, the column might experience single curvature loading or "snap through to single curvature mode," as stated in AS3600. Therefore, the analysis assuming double curvature moments would be overwritten by the opposite minimum eccentricity moment.

    Show More