Steel Base Plate Design to American Standards

How to easily design steel base plates and anchor rods to the ACI 318-19 and AISC 360-16 code specifications.

About this event

Designing steel base plates can involve complex calculations to determine the base plate thickness and anchor rod embedment depths according to the applied loads and relevant standards requirements such as the ACI 318-19 and AISC 360-16.

Join ClearCalcs Structural Design Expert Eva Wu, on Wednesday, 28 June 2023, at 1 pm Eastern Time (ET) to learn more about how you can easily use ClearCalcs Steel Base Plate Calculator to perform the fast and efficient design of steel base plates and anchor rods under LRFD analysis.

In this webinar, we will cover:

• An overview of steel base plate and its design components
• Common application of steel base plate in residential or light commercial design
• Design and material considerations -- Geometry considerations -- Forces acting on baseplate -- Failure modes of baseplates -- Base plate design
• Worked example in ClearCalcs

Resources

• PowerPoint Presentation

Webinar Summary

The webinar was hosted by ClearCalcs Director of Customer Success, Connor Conzelman, and presented by Eva Wu, ClearCalcs Structural Engineer. The webinar covers the basics of base plate design, including what a base plate is, why it is important, and the forces and failure modes associated with base plates. It also includes a work example using ClearCalcs software.

Base plates are important in steel concrete interfaces because they help with leveling concrete and provide a set amount of tolerance between the foundation and column. The forces acting on base plates include plate bending and anchor forces, which can cause plate yielding or anchor failure. To prevent these failures, the plate should have adequate thickness and the anchors can be hooked or an anchor plate can be added.

The ClearCalcs steel base plate calculator dynamically calculates parameters based on the inputted force, and allows for checking anchor cancel capacity, pullout capacity, and shear capacity. It also checks for concrete breakout, side blowout, pry out, and sheer breakout, providing a comprehensive analysis of base plate design.

In the current segment, Eva continues with the design example and updates the dimensions of the base plate to accommodate the given column size and forces. She then calculates the required plate length and width based on the compressive strength and factored load. Eva also mentions that ClearCalcs can factor in unfactored forces for designing purposes.

In the current segment, Eva adjusts the dimensions of the base plate to ensure it can handle the required loads. She increases the plate thickness and length iteratively until all failure modes are accounted for. Additionally, she mentions that ClearCalcs is working on creating a reference list for their templates and encourages users to provide feedback and suggestions for future improvements.

During the webinar, Eva mentions that ClearCalcs can factor in unfactored forces for designing purposes. She also explains that the grout beneath the plate is considered in the calculations and that they are open to building features around stainless steel bolts if users require them. Additionally, Nathan asks about prying forces on the base plate, to which Eva responds that they track for overturning and adequate anchors but hadn't considered prying of the plate itself yet.