Only slabs that have been specified with two-way load decomposition are designed.

In order to perform span - effective depth checks for irregular shaped beam and slab panels, they have to be converted to idealized four sided rectangular panels.

To do this, the enclosing lengths of the panel in X and Y are first determined, (local X being defined by the panel rotation angle):

Lx-enc = maximum overall length of the panel measured parallel to local X

Ly-enc = maximum overall length of the panel measured perpendicular to local X

A user specified adjustment ratio is then applied to these lengths to determine the adjusted lengths. Conservatively the adjustment ratio defaults to 1.0 in both directions.

In situations where the panel does not have 4 sides, (such as the one shown below), some engineering judgement might be required when deciding on appropriate values of the adjustment ratios in each direction.

The resulting idealized panel with dimensions in X and Y is illustrated below:.

Edge Category

For the span-effective depth check, the edge categories in each direction have to be manually assigned to the idealized slab panel. The three edge categories being:

• Unsupported
• Continuous Support
• Dis-continuous Support (default)