There are many real-world examples of steel stacks or chimneys supported on top of another structure. This could be a space frame, building or another piece of equipment such as a heater. The supporting structure can introduce flexibility to the system, and this...
When designing a stack should steel stack deflection be a concern? It's a good question and one that comes up frequently, The design standards give some guidance, but the standards vary in how they handle steel stack deflection and there is some room for...
Analysis of a conical transition isn't as simply as looking at just the section properties along the cone. Cone-cylinder junctions are areas of high discontinuity stresses. They have unbalanced radial loads from the axial and bending loads it sees, as well as...
There is nothing simple about recommending anchor bolt pretension, ask ten engineers and you could get eleven different recommendations. Meca has done all of the research in order to try to resolve this topic once and for all...at least until the next anchor bolt...
MecaStack performs anchor bolt designs for tensile and shear loads, using some common codes. This hasn't always been true, starting in v5534 some new standards were added and this article explains the technical details associated with these new options. New design...
How close can you space stacks? It's a common question, and one that doesn't have a simple answer. There are several factors that should be considered, and I'm going to go over those factors in this article. The Theory: When two cylinders are closely spaced and the...
There are many useful features within the output window that can save the designer time and energy. Here is a video to illustrate these features and how to navigate the calculation output.
Many times we have the difficult task of analyzing a structure that was designed long ago. In such cases, you may find that the wind speed used may appear significantly lower than the wind speed you would expect for that location using today's standards. In these...
MecaStack allows the user to enter ladders and platforms on their stack. These are considered an appurtenance, and not adding any structural stiffness to the stack. MecaStack does consider the wind area and weight added by these ladders and platforms, which can be...