Articles

Stack Conical Transition Analysis

Stack Conical Transition Analysis

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...

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Anchor Bolt Design

Anchor Bolt Design

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...

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Too Close for Comfort

Too Close for Comfort

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...

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Navigating the Output Like a Boss

Navigating the Output Like a Boss

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.

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Fastest-Mile Wind Speed

Fastest-Mile Wind Speed

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...

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Climbing the Ladder

Climbing the Ladder

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...

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Piggy-Back Stacks

Piggy-Back Stacks

We often get the question of how to model a Tandem or Piggy back stack in MecaStack. One can be handled by the software and the other cannot. Piggy-Back Stacks:A Piggy-Back stack is one where one or more stack is supported by another stack. Usually the biggest stack...

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Ultimate Guide to Material Properties

Ultimate Guide to Material Properties

MecaStack has a built in database for stack material properties, which are intended to help the designer. There are some common questions and problems that we see when it comes to the use of the stack material properties. Material Properties are NOT Automatically...

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Life is a Breach

Life is a Breach

Updated April 16, 2020: The method of breach analysis discussed in this article is referred to as the "Section Property" method in MecaStack.  As of v5506 there is now a method available called the "Troitsky" method, and an article discussing that method is in another...

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