Dear Colleagues,
// STAAD.Pro CONNECT Edition - Version 22.12.00.142 //
there was a situation where we had to find out the lateral forces due to wind on a light pole (tapered profile) and provide suitable support for the same.
Wind was applied using Wind Load generation and Open type and we had the forces transferred to STAAD.Foundation and completed the task.
however recently when recently we had to repeat the exercise noticed that STAAD seemed to have considered the average width of the overall member instead of the ones in each respective pressure zones.
can we include this load variation along tapered sections in future STAAD.Pro releases?
(for regular sections, other than angles, the wind load seemed to work fine, when the plain surface / face of the member was normal to that of the direction of wind applied)
(sorry I'm unable to use the proper words, so I made a comparison Load / Moment / Displacement and have attached a sample STAAD & EXCEL, where we can see a huge difference in the Nodel displacements & Support Moments generated)
I guess the previous attempt to automate, lead to un-optimized results 😓
Thank you for posting your idea. This is a reasonable request and will be added to the development backlog.