Lintels and Bond Beams:

Lintels and Bond Beams:

Beam Bond Beams: Structural elements that provide load transfer across spans where there is no solid wall section below (where there is a vertically open wall section or no wall at all).

Wall-Top Bond Beams: Structural elements that ensure loads coming from slabs are distributed evenly to the walls.

Lintels: Structural elements in masonry buildings that transfer the vertical loads from the wall sections above doors and windows to the adjacent solid wall sections beside the door or window.

The program takes into account the presence of wall-top bond beams in wall drawing. In addition, beam bond beams above doors and windows are generated automatically. Beam bond beams above a door or window are deleted when the door or window is deleted, and are shifted when the door or window is moved. The user must not draw a beam bond beam again in the same region after drawing a door or window.

Since beam bond beams are generally used over short spans, their static reinforced concrete calculations are not performed by the program. Although the use of bond beams with large spans is not recommended, if they are used, the static and reinforced concrete calculations and drawings must be carried out separately, independently of the program. The program draws beam bond beam reinforcement constructively in accordance with the rules specified in the earthquake code.

When a wall is defined on a slab in the program, load transfer from upper-storey walls to lower-storey slabs is not performed. Therefore, when it is necessary to define a wall on a slab, it will be appropriate to draw a beam bond beam below the wall (at the ceiling of the lower storey). If beam bond beams do not currently exist, the beam bond beam height may be taken equal to the slab thickness or as zero cm in height.

No special definition has been made for lintels in the program. In the program, the loads from the wall sections above doors and windows are transferred to the adjacent solid walls via the beam bond beams above the door or window. Since the contribution of lintels to the building's lateral resistance from a seismic perspective is negligible, and since they do not enter the system as a parameter in terms of the code formulation (they are not part of the analysis method described by the code), their definition was deemed unnecessary.

If wall-top bond beams and beam bond beams are not present in the building, it is recommended to set both the wall-top bond beam height and the beam bond beam height equal to the slab thickness. This is because, in the vertical stress check, the effective wall height is calculated by subtracting the wall-top bond beam height from the storey height.

The wall-top bond beam is drawn automatically together with the wall. It acts on the system as a weight, as the high-density region of the wall. Since it is part of the wall, it cannot be drawn on its own and does not carry a load on its own. The wall-top bond beam is the load-bearing wall at wall junctions.

Beam bond beams must not be drawn again on top of walls in the same direction (stacked). If drawn in this way, both the wall and the beam bond beam will receive loads from the upper storey (from walls and vertical bond beams) as well as from their own storey (from slabs and beam bond beams), meaning loads will be considered twice, which increases the load transfer error.