Structural Learning Hub

Welcome to the Structural Learning Hub — a collection of practical, step-by-step tutorials designed to help you understand the fundamentals behind structural design. Each guide walks through real-world examples using WebStructural, with code-based capacity checks and clear explanations of the underlying engineering principles.

Whether you're new to structural design, refreshing your skills, or validating design decisions, these tutorials are written to be approachable, accurate, and grounded in modern design standards such as AISC 360 and ACI 318.

Start Learning

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  How to Design a Steel Beam — Step-by-Step Guide

  Learn how to size and check steel beams for bending, shear, deflection, and lateral-torsional buckling using AISC design provisions. Covers span selection, loading, material grade, and design methods (ASD and LRFD).
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  How to Design a Flitch Beam

  Learn how flitch beams combine wood and steel to increase strength and stiffness. This tutorial explains material properties, load sharing, and design checks for composite beam behavior.
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  Concrete Footing Design Basics

  Understand how soil bearing pressure, footing geometry, loads, and reinforcement interact to produce a safe and efficient spread footing design using ACI 318 provisions.
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  How to Design Anchor Bolts in Concrete

  Walk through anchor bolt design and review key failure modes including steel rupture, concrete breakout, pullout, side-face blowout, and pryout — all based on ACI 318 anchor design requirements.

Who These Tutorials Are For

These resources are intended for structural engineers, architects, builders, students, and technically-minded professionals who want a clear explanation of design fundamentals without skipping the underlying concepts.

Design Tools Included

Each tutorial is paired with a WebStructural design tool so you can follow along interactively:

• Beam Designer
• Concrete Footing Designer
• Anchor Bolt Designer

All tools perform code-based design checks and can be used to explore “what-if” scenarios and verify design assumptions.

Next Steps

You can work through the tutorials in any order, but many users start with steel beam design before moving on to supporting elements such as footings and anchors. As additional tutorials are added, they will appear here in the Learning Hub.

When you're ready to move from examples to real projects, you can start designing right away using the WebStructural tools.