week 1 .Portal frames.

The issue with most long span achievements in architecture and design revolves around the ability to span and successfully transfer loads to the ground without compromising the internal function space with a central column grid. For centuries our design and engineering conquests have revolved around this ability to span in architecture, now as buildings technologies and materials become more sophisticated this is ability to span is becoming seamlessly integral with some of the more recognised monumental architectural proposals around the world today. However as it has been around for some time portal; frames are also present in out everyday life… in its crudest form… the warehouse.

To explain it in its simplest form I ventured to the notorious Bunning’s warehouse to undertake a little more research in this construction methodology of the portal frame. Basically most portal frames are achievable through the use of steel as it has the properties of rigidity over a long distance. Concrete is also commonly used but generally the steel roof frame would span the distance between tilt up pre-cast walls.

The image above is a recent development of a future Bunning’s warehouse on the gold coast. One of the great benefits of this construction is that a lot of the components are prefabricate and therefore commercially viable since they are quite repetitious.
Here you can see that most of the load is transferred from the steel rafters towards the columns. The structural beams have a shorter cross section and span longer distance. As most of the force is occurring in the join between beam and column this junction can be thickened to take and transfer the load.