On November 23rd of last yeart I had the honour of reading a paper before the Institution of Structural Engineers, on the subject of Building Regulations in which attention was directed to the general law of building in the country, and passing reference was made to a limited number of towns where building is controlled directly by provisions in an Act or Acts of Parliament confined to that town alone. C. Roland Woods
SIR,--I have been eagerly anticipating Mr. Andrews’s paper on the above subject, and your March issue to hand this morning has enabled me to read it with pleasure.
Perhaps this subject is a little more important than is generally realised; at any rate, it is certainly more extensive then the average engineer or contractor anticipates. The various ramifications of this specialised type of construction are considered in the following notes, and it will be seen from the chart that whereas some sections are expanded into great detail, others are dealt with in a very brief manner. For instance, whilst the portion headed "Omitting Concrete" is divided into "Floors" and "Walls" (an arbitrary division which is both natural and convenient), the paper deals only with the former. These drastic limitations are necessary in order to keep the paper of reasonable size. J. Singleton-Green
If in any statically indeterminate structure with r redundants, we introduce, Figure 1, an additional hinge (a), or make a cut and supply a frictionless guide which allows either (b) purely axial displacements, or (c) purely transverse displacements, then the redundancy will be reduced by one degree. H.A. Whitaker
Members of the Institution will be grieved to learn that Dr. Walter Rosenhain, F.R.S., died on the 17th March, at the age of 58. Dr. Rosenhain was a brilliant metallurgist, and for twenty-five years held the post of Superintendent to the Department of Metallurgy and Metallurgical Chemistry at the National Physical Laboratory, Dr Rosenhain was President of the International Association for Testing Materials, and was a member of many scientific and technical societies, including the Institution of Structural Engineers, of which he was elected a Member in 1932. He published a large number of papers and addresses, and was to have presented a paper on “Metallic Materials of Construction” to the Institution in February. When the meeting was cancelled owing to his illness, he very kindly offered to prepare the paper for next session. His illness however proved to be fatal, and the Institution now mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished Members.
WHEN a structural engineer designs a foundation, he requires to know the capacity of his subsoil, not only on the surface, or at the date of erection of the superstructure, but throughout its depth and throughout the period of time during which his structure is expected to last. The properties of the materials he uses above ground and for his footings are so well known and so standardised both in manufacture and use that few erectors and designers realise the amount of observation, experiment, and control of characteristics on which depends the knowledge that enables them to calculate the amount of steel needed for a floor beam or a bridge member, or the amount of concrete needed for a column. H.H. Leys
On the 15th January, 1934, the Building Acts Committee of the London County Council made the following recommendation:-