Editor Picks

A waffle slab is made of a thin topping supported by ribs running in both directions, giving it the appearance of waffle when looked from below. Waffle slabs are a special type of reinforced concrete slab, where aesthetics meet with certain structural characteristics. They have advantages such as the aesthetics, higher load capacity and longer spans. Since they are stiff due to their higher overall thickness, they reduce floor vibrations, which is also desirable in hospitals, labs. Their rigidity also enable better distribution of lateral forces. Contrary to the belief of many, waffle slabs don’t necessarily reduce material usage (and consequently dead load of the building) however, because overall thickness […] Read More

Masonry construction dates back thousands of years. The builders of the past, took advantage of compression strength of stone and were still able to build amazing structures, without even possessing the technology to take on tensile forces, which only became possible in modern times with steel. In our age though, masonry is also combined with reinforcing steel, to make it much more ductile and resistant to loads. Masonry can be stone or brick. Today’s masonry is mainly in the form of manufactured bricks, such as CMU – Concrete Masonry Units, which are also reinforced with steel bars. From now we will mean brick masonry in this post. Both stone and […] Read More

Geotechnical engineering is one of the five main branches in civil engineering, which can further be categorized into soil mechanics, foundation engineering, retaining structures and excavations. Geotechnical engineering is a branch that interacts with all other branches, after all, every structure needs foundation system. Geotechnical engineering failures are usually among the costliest to fix, if the fix is possible at all in the first place. Before we discuss failures, we should briefly describe how the process works in geotechnical engineering, which is something not many people may be familiar. The process in geotechnical engineering starts with a site investigation, after the site is decided on by the owner of the […] Read More

This is one of the posts in a series of our posts that we discuss failures. Also check out the other posts in constructmagazine.com, where we discuss failures in different contexts of civil engineering. A Brief Introduction of Earthquakes vs. Structures: Earthquakes are very important aspect of most design in civil engineering, and for any type of structure. The fundamental earthquake principles as it applies to structures are of course the same, although there are specific items that apply to each structure. Here we will discuss earthquake related failures in buildings. Earthquakes result from movements of large land masses, which in turn affect structures, by making them move too. Since […] Read More

Structural engineering is a major branch of civil engineering, and realistically the first thing that comes to mind of many, when the words civil engineering are mentioned. It deals with designing the body of all types of structures and their supplementary components, connections, attachments per the criteria given in codes, to ensure public comfort and safety. As we mentioned in the previous post in Construct Magazine, failures in civil engineering, structures can fail in so many ways but they can all be grouped under several categories. Let’s list them below… Structural Failure Types in Materials and Members: Structural members can fail as a result of many reasons such as: Yielding […] Read More

To understand what liquefaction is, we must first understand shear stress in soils, which in turn means, the strength of soil… Load carrying capacity of any material arises from its shear strength. Soils, rocks, which carry our structures are no exception to this rule. The greater a foundation material has shear strength, the better it can support our structures with less settlement. Shear strength is a result of how well the particles of a material stick to each other, and, the resistance they provide when they are made to slide over each other. In other words, Shear strength = The resistance provided particles sticking to each other + The resistance […] Read More

For non engineers, structural analysis may seem like an overly complex subject. A person who is not a civil engineer will never be required or even allowed to solve a real structure, but it is still good to give some general idea for learning. This came to my mind when I heard a question once, from a nonengineer, who drew sketch of a really simple structure and asked if we solve this member by member such as column by column, slab by slab and beam by beam. This is of course not correct and civil engineers know that it doesn’t work that way… So for people who are not civil […] Read More