Structures

From transforming a warehouse into an office building or reimagining a church as an entertainment venue, adaptive reuse is making old new again in cities across the country. Rather than demolishing structures that no longer serve their original purpose, adaptive reuse focuses on converting them into something new and useful to support sustainability and preserve history. Adaptive reuse has gained in popularity for a number of reasons, from the practical to the aspirational. These projects tend to be less expensive than ground-up projects and can be completed more quickly. By investing in neighborhoods that have been overlooked or neglected areas of a city, adaptive reuse can also serve as a […] Read More

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

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

Pipes are inseparable components of industrial facilities which produce all the products we use in our daily life. In this article, we talk about one of the relatively less known type of structures, pipe supports, which don’t get the attention they deserve as other structures but by no means less important, as they carry and hold pipes safely in their place. Although at first a pipe support system may look rather straightforward, a lot goes into designing and building them. The loads that must be considered are:• Dead Load – the weights of the piping insulation, any attached components and of course the pipe support structure itself.• Live Load – […] Read More

In this post we will try to examine various design and construction considerations for wide span roofs. Read More

In this post we will discuss various aspects when designing and analyzing Reinforced Concrete (RC) moment frames and behavior of structural members. Read More

In this post we will look at seismic strengthening methods of concrete buildings. Read More

The three main types of tunneling are Let’s take a look at each briefly… Cut and cover method: This is a frequently used method when the required tunnel excavation is not very deep (i.e. up to around 80 feet or so). The method involves excavating a trench in the ground, and not boring the tunnel underground. At what stage this excavation is performed with respect to the tunnel construction makes a difference. Because of this, cut and cover method can be grouped into two as, bottom up method and top down method. The bottom-up method is the straightforward one. First the retaining walls are inserted into the ground, that will […] Read More

Of course when we talk about structures, the first thing that comes to our minds is the buildings, as we live in them, and we see all sorts of them around. By buildings we mean all kind of buildings that enclose an area from outside and separates it with the outside… such as residences, offices, high rises, warehouses, factory buildings, sports halls, malls… Only after the architectural design is complete, which determines how will the building look, how big or small, what functions it will perform where, how will the interior spaces be allocated, how many levels it will be, only after that, the engineering design comes into play. The […] Read More

Railroads, in many instances can provide a more efficient way of transportation. For example, in developed countries like Europe or Japan, people can access to almost anywhere, including to or close to even small towns, with railroads and the big cities have extensive metro networks, which are also considered as railroads, from civil engineering point of view. The benefits of railroad vs car transportation are virtually limitless, in terms of economy, environment, speed, efficient use of land and more. The geometric design concept of railroads, in terms of horizontal and vertical alignment is in principle similar in to road design, with necessary differences and lower tolerances. For example, the cross […] Read More