Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet

Brick Pier Wall Design

Brick piers are small brick columns installed at regular intervals along a single leaf masonry wall. Brick piers are incorporated into single leaf masonry walls in order to increase the walls resistance to lateral loads. Cavity walls do not usually incorporate piers, it is more common to add steel reinforcement to cavity walls if greater lateral resistance is required.

Brick piers can be an economical way to provide lateral stability to a wall subject to lateral forces. The CivilWeb Free Standing Masonry Wall Design Spreadsheet can be used to design free standing masonry walls without piers. However, in many cases free standing walls are not suitable either due to a large required height or because of particularly high lateral loads from wind. This can be for walls at the top of a slope for instance or in an area subject to high winds.

Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet

The CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet is designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible, for both technical engineers and non-technical users such as  homeowners, architects or similar. For this reason the number of inputs has been reduced as far as possible and many of the inputs include lists of suitable values in accordance with the relevant standards. The inputs required for the design are as follows;

• Simple geometric properties of the wall such as length, height, support conditions and wall thickness.
• Geometry of the brick piers including pier depth, width and spacing.
• Details of the masonry bricks or blocks used including type, strength, height and width and mortar details.
• Loading details including lateral wind loads.
• Partial safety factors.

The spreadsheet takes all these inputs and uses them to complete all the calculations as required under the standards. The spreadsheet calculates the strength of the wall without the piers and then calculates the additional lateral resistance provided by the piers. Finally the spreadsheet checks whether the resistance of the wall and the piers is sufficient to resist the lateral forces acting on the wall.

The CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet provides the following calculations;

• Slenderness Check
• Lateral Resistance of the wall
• Design moment in wall using yield line theory
• Serviceability check in accordance with Annex F or BS 5628-1

The CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet is designed to provide a user friendly and intuitive user interface which allows the design to be completed as quickly and easily as possible. Each sheet in the spreadsheet includes unique dynamic drawings of the proposed wall and brick piers. This shows the user exactly what inputs the spreadsheet is using to complete the calculations and also removes the risk of any of the geometrical inputs being used incorrectly. The diagrams are fully dimensioned and labelled showing all the key geometrical information.

The CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet also includes preset information for many of the design inputs to speed up and simplify the design process. These include all the standard masonry types, mortar types and strengths, support conditions and quality control inputs meaning that the user does not have to remember or refer back to the standards in order to use the spreadsheet. This also makes this spreadsheet the easiest way to complete a brick pier design for both technical and non-technical users.

CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet

The CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet is an easy to use Excel spreadsheet which can be used to design masonry walls with piers providing lateral support. The spreadsheet follows a simple and user friendly interface which completes all the calculations required in accordance with BS EN 1996-1-1 or BS 5628-1. The spreadsheet comes complete with unique analysis tools allowing the user to complete fully optimised brick pier designs in minutes.

Buy the CivilWeb Brick Pier Design Spreadsheet now for only £19.99.