Steel Column Base Plate Design

The design of base plates of columns in steel frame buildings is simple but time consuming. The AISC Manual of Steel Construction contains tables of base plate sizes and thickness for maximum loads on columns of short lengths. However, in actual practice the column loads for various column sizes are seldom maximum as tabulated in the AISC Manual. Therefore, the size and thickness of base plate have to be calculated following the procedure given on pg. 3-95 of the AISC Manual of Steel Construction, 7th Edition. The writer has developed an alignment chart for the design of base plates of axially loaded columns using the AISC method.