Structures

Why Modeling Stairs Can Trigger Soft-Story and Torsional Irregularity Warnings — and How Structural Software Can Improve Structural engineers occasionally report that a building model behaves normally until reinforced concrete stairs are added, at which point soft-story or torsional irregularity warnings suddenly appear. Stairs are commonly included in analytical models because they contribute gravity loads, seismic mass, and sometimes structural stiffness. As a result, software […] Read More

The water distribution system of the Roman Empire was a very remarkable feat of civil engineering. By supplying large volumes of water to urban centers—especially Rome—it enabled populations on an unprecedented scale. At its peak, Rome reached nearly one million residents, supported by a reliable and sophisticated water supply of adequate capacity, bringing water from distances of tens of kilometers away. Structures such as the […] Read More

Freshly poured concrete hardens within a few hours but needs about four weeks to reach full design strength. In multistory cast-in-place buildings, this waiting period can delay construction schedules, so engineers often remove formwork earlier and use shoring and reshoring to safely transfer loads to lower floors that have gained more strength. With proper planning, floor cycles can be reduced to about two weeks. Shoring […] Read More

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 […] 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 […] 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 […] 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 […] 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