Floor Live Load Explained

Beams studs joists and rafters act as a structural skeleton and must be strong enough and stiff enough to resist these loads.

Floor live load explained.

In other words the weight is distributed or shared uniformly by the members in the floor or roof system. Equivalent open aisle live load is 200lbs 3ft. Allowable total load for floors is the least of load capacities for l 240 bending and shear. For the most part live load and dead load values for floor and roof systems are considered distributed loads.

Floors must be able to support two different kinds of weight loads. To determine the minimum design values for strength live and dead loads are added together. Live loads can be prescribed to any structural element floors columns beams even roofs and will ultimately be factored into a calculation of gravity loads which we ll explain below. For example if the walking surface were 3 feet wide and 10 feet long the total live load on the walkway would be.

3 ft 10 ft 100 lbs sq ft. The term live load refers to the total load carried by the floor including furnishing occupants and other objects being stored. Roof and floor live loads are produced during maintenance by workers equipment and materials and during the life of the structure by movable objects such as planters and people. The house acts as a structural system resisting dead loads weight of materials live loads weights imposed by use and occupancy like snow loads and wind loads.

The live load is the weight of furnishings people and anything else that the floor needs to support but which isn t permanently attached. Bridge live loads are produced by vehicles traveling over the deck of the bridge. When considering an open aisle within the cmfs a realistic live load for this aisle is to place a 200 pound person in front of each shelving cabinet i e. Allowable total load is therefore 173 psf.

Live load is the lesser of the load for l 360 and total load as determined above minus dead load. Strength and stiffness are equally important. We measure uniform live loads as pounds per square foot psf. The dead load on the floor is the weight of the floor structure itself and anything else that is permanently attached to the floor.