Hello dear Dlubal team,
I am currently working on an earthquake verification for a building in RFEM 6 and want to design masonry walls and reinforced concrete walls combined and use them for the load transfer of the bracing. However, in the model basic data, I can only select the National Annex for Austria; the German National Annex is not available there. Therefore, my questions:
How can a design according to the German National Annex be carried out in RFEM 6?
Is there a way to manually enter the material properties for masonry units according to the German NA so that the design can be carried out in accordance with the standard?
Thank you very much for the response.
Hello,
I had already asked support about the masonry characteristic values. Their response was:
"There are only masonry materials available according to Austrian standards."
Unfortunately, the answer is not satisfactory. Dlubal still has considerable potential for improvement here!
Best regards
Hi mm304398,
Our masonry design is based on the exact nonlinear behavior of the masonry. A direct design according to the corresponding standards is not implemented in RFEM. Unfortunately, the necessary data for Germany from the manufacturer/standards side is not yet available for nonlinear calculation. However, user-defined parameters can be used.
In your case, however, you want to perform seismic calculations. Here, all nonlinearities would be ignored in the analysis anyway when using the response spectrum method.
You can carry out a response spectrum method with a reinforced concrete design and the linear material behavior of the masonry. Subsequently, masonry verifications should be carried out externally. You can also try to program your own automated verification algorithm in connection with our API. For simpler stress checks, this is a good way to "save" the procedure for future projects.
Best regards,
Thomas Eichner
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