Force Envelope

A smart designer plans for the worst, making the envelope concept absolutely necessary.

Imagine a skyscraper during a storm: it faces strong winds, rain, and the weight of people. To address these challenges simultaneously, we utilize load combinations.

?These load combinations are detailed in codes, and as the load type increases, so do the load combinations. Manually checking results for each load combination becomes challenging.

To simplify this process, we generate an envelope for all load combinations. This envelope displays the maximum forces that could arise from any combination.

So Simple A force envelope is a single force diagram that super imposes all load combinations and make it visible for you at a single place.

Now, it's not necessary to use an envelope every time. When to use it and when not to will be discussed in the next article.