Plinth Beam Design Concept

Designing of plinth beam is similar to a normal roof beam. No secondary beams exist at plinth level. It means no beams are built upon other beams. Only beams lean on columns.

The following points are vital for designing a plinth beam:

Design should be started at the whole plinth story similar to that of the standard floor level.

Remove all the secondary beams from the plinth beam level.

Accomplish drift check for the building and revise the column sizes unless the drift becomes close to needed values required. It means the columns should not be too large in size.

If there exist only little variation among the drift check for being fulfilled, raise the size of plinth beam and check. The step should be continued unless the exact results are achieved.

Live load on plinth beam is measured as follows
L.L = [width of wall over the beam*height of wall*unit weight of brick]

Remember, lowest grade of concrete for plinth beam is M25.

Only the wall load should be taken into consideration at the time of designing the plinth beam as there does not exist any other live load functioning over it.

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