Development and Application of Microsoft Excel VBA A Computer programme for Structural Design of Concrete Footings

Abstract

Most structural engineers use Microsoft (MS) Excel in their work as a daily basis, this presentation will illustrate some more unique ways in which Excel can be used as a very powerful tool in structural design. The tools shown are focused around some simple code written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to develop a computer programme, entitled FSD. In this study the code of VBA FSD programme is actually quite simple for any engineer and students to get reactions results from ETABS software Models by use application programming interface (API) function and using in design of footings. The significance of this study was find way to save wasting time in export the results to software and errors in modeling when dealing with this soft wares that use finite elements method (FEM) without practical experience for the design of footings. The main objective of the study was to provide interesting findings and will balance equations to construct shear force and bending moment in analysis raft foundations this could be by conventional rigid method passing through factors to adjust the column load and the soil pressure together. In is this study a reinforced concrete structure of Six stores was modeled in ETABS as case study, the design footing by CSI SAFE software was done to verification the design in FSD proramme and Comparison of the results showed that the difference between finite element software CSI SAFE design and FSD software did not exceed 8.5% in analysis and did not exceed 30% in flexure design in all types of footing. The computer programme FSD can be used reliably as design software for footings according to brutish standard BS9811-1997.