MasterRC Pile Cap Design Overview

The MasterRC Pile Cap design module provides a stand-alone or integrated, interactive pile cap design environment for the design or reinforced concrete pile caps to British Standard BS 8110, Eurocode BS EN 1993-1-2 or South African Code SABS 0100:1994. The pile cap module can design pile caps for groupings of piles from a single pile up to a group of 9 number piles.

When used as a standalone module, the user can input axial forces and bending moments in two directions while when used as an integrated design module, the loading cases used for the frame design are used and the critical load cases identified as part of the pile cap design.

The pile cap design module offers two design methodologies for the pile cap design, namely Beam Theory, which treats the pile cap as a beam, or Strut and Tie design, for use when the pile cap depth is large enough that beam theory is no longer valid. The software offers additional options where a comparison of the two design methods is done and either the less onerous, or more onerous of the designs is chosen.

The design methods are based on standard layouts. These can be altered for different pile spacings, but the layouts are fixed, and it is not possible to create user defined layouts. The design method is also limited to compression loadings in piles only.

In addition to carrying out the structural design of the pile cap, the MasterSeries Pile Cap module can also provide a printout of the reinforcement details and printed rebar schedule.

Note: The pile cap design module provides a design for the pile cap element only and does not design the piles themselves. Due to the methodology adopted, the pile cap module will only provide a design where the piles are in compression. The design where piles are in tension is outside the scope of the module. Horizontal load due to the shear in the column is assumed to be resisted by other methods and is not considered to act on the piles.