Fan Support Dynamic Analysis Guidelines

Revision A

1. Small fans with fan weight less than 5 kips supported on building floors.
 The weight of the slab and equipment pad should be at least 2.5 times the fan operating weight. The
effective plan area of the slab should be a distance 2 times the floor thickness (excluding the pad
thickness) from the periphery of the equipment, or the bay area, whichever is smaller.
 When the above condition is not met, the fundamental frequency ( f n) of the slab plus supporting
beams directly below the fan should be greater than 3 Hz and outside the resonance zone of
f /f n ≤ 0.8, or f /f n ≥ 0.8 , while f is the fan operating frequency.
2. Small fans with fan weight less than 5 kips supported on a block foundation or pile foundation
with pile cap
 The foundation weight should be at least 2.5 times the fan operating weight. No additional dynamic
analysis is required when this condition is met.
3. Large fans with fan weight 5 kips and more and supported on building floors.
 The fan should be symmetrically placed on the support steel to obtain balanced bearing
displacements and the span length of the framing should be limited to 30 feet or less to facilitate the
design of a stiff support system.
 Constant slab thickness should be maintained within the bay that supports the equipment to reduce
the complexity of frequency calculations.
 Shear studs should be used near the fan to ensure additional stiffness.
 The manufacturer’s recommendations should be reviewed to incorporate any special deflection
and/or stiffness requirements in the analysis and design of the foundation .
 Cantilevers should not be used to support large fans or placed adjacent to bays supporting the large
fans.
 All building columns supporting large vibratory equipment should extend continuously to the building
foundation.
 Common beam or girder support for more than one large fan should be avoided.
 Conventional framing should be used; any beam that directly supports equipment should have a
constant moment of inertia along its entire length, i.e., do not use partially cover-plated beams. Use
connection details that produce minimal stress concentrations.
 The immediate support beams should be placed perpendicular to the axis of the shaft and directly
under each pedestal.
 A detailed dynamic analysis is required. The analysis should include all the supporting beams,
columns, lateral bracings, the weight of the fan and other equipment weights which can reasonably
represent the dyn
 .
 The foundation weight should be at least 2.5 times the fan operating weight.
 A detailed dynamic analysis is required. The analysis should include all the concrete pedestals, piers, or
concrete frames, walls etc.
 The analysis should reflect the dynamic behaviour of the system at the fan bearing location. The fan
housing can be considered as rigid elements when its stiffness is not available.
 When the fan is supported on damper/isolator. The spring constant and the damping of the
damper/isolator should be included in the analysis model.
 ACI 351 can be followed for the soil and pile dynamic properties. Alternatively, Software Dyna 6.1 can be
used to calculate these properties.
 When the acceptance criteria from the vendor are not available, the charts in ACI 351 can be used as a
guide to establish the acceptance criteria.