Cantilever Diaphragms

Modern apartment buildings and hotels often feature expansive windows and open spaces on exterior walls, leaving little room for traditional shear walls. Cantilevered diaphragms are essential in these designs, efficiently transferring lateral loads to internal supports.

With LAVA, designing cantilever diaphragms has never been easier. The software streamlines the process by accurately distributing loads to a single support line, even for complex structures.

Aligned with the Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic (SDPWS) 4.2.5.2, LAVA empowers engineers to model cantilever diaphragms.

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How does this work?

LAVA allows you to offset the supports of the diaphragm to allow for a single or double cantilever diaphragm. In this example, this ensures that the lateral loads will be distributed to the interior shear walls. Since the diaphragms are defined separately for X and Y directions, you can fine tune the lateral load distribution in both directions per the building layout.

LAVA enables you to tackle challenging cantilever diaphragm designs with confidence, saving valuable time and ensuring exceptional accuracy. Start building smarter today!

Ready to revolutionize your structural engineering process?
Discover how LAVA can elevate your designs today. Click here for a step-by-step process showing how you can use LAVA to build this type of model and an example model file to see it for yourself.