How Do You Calculate Building Loads for a Concrete Office in North Vancouver?

[kedwardr]

The following 6‐storey (5 elevated floor and roof) concrete office building is located in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where the soil condition is site class B. The lateral force resisting system is ductile concrete shear walls with Rd = 3.5 and Ro = 1.6. The storey height is 4 meters. Please determine:
(a) Dead load of typical floor and roof based on the provided sections.
(b) Live load of typical floor and roof based on the intended usage.
(c) Earthquake load, both base shear and floor‐by‐floor shear, assuming seismic weight is
100% of dead and live loads. Include cladding loads, and neglect self‐weight of columns
and shear walls.
(d) All load combinations needed for design including snow,rain,and wind.

Can anyone suggest me on where to start? I am kind of stuck on how you break down step by step. This is much more complicated than the problems presented in Structural Analysis by RC Hibeller.

The cross sections for the roofs and ceiling are given below. However, I am not too sure what the bigger drawing is. Maybe anyone can help me point out?

THANKS!
K

 

[Benja]

You need to look in the section of your book that discusses design loads. They want you to properly assign loads per the required building code.

The bigger drawing is a floor plan, basically a top view where they're showing the locations of the columns and walls in the building.

 

[pongo38]

The difference between this design question and a typical structural analysis question is that not all the information is given. You have to make assumptions. It would be better to try to answer the question completely in 1 hour and then determine which assumptions made could be refined, rather than try to get every word and line absolutely correct as you go along. For example you might assume initially that floors dead and live load add up to 10 kN/m2. That may or may not be right, but it does get you somewhere vaguely right, and that is better than going nowhere at all.