The paper outlines the uses that can be made of ductility in reinforced concrete frames, the enhanced properties of ductile frames and the means of achieving ductility. It also treats the particular application of ductility to earthquake design and the very close relationship between the ductility of frames and ultimate methods of design. G.C. Entrican
Mr. R. Paul Johnson (Associate-Member) said it was remarkable how high a proportion of the tests on cased stanchions had been carried out under axial loading. We should, therefore, congratulate the author on having included eccentricity of load as a variable in his tests. But Mr. Stevens had not gone far enough. He concluded his paper by giving tentative recommendations for the ultimate strength of encased stanchions under minor axis bending and with a known eccentricity of load. That corresponded to the way in which the stanchions were tested, but it seemed to the speaker to be of limited practical use. He asked how the author intended the recommendations to be used for the design of a stanchion length in a building structure, for which eccentricity of load was the wrong parameter. The end moments in a stanchion in a building structure were rarely equal to each other, and certainly did not remain proportional to axial load as load increased.
The establishment of a Department of Architecture and Civic Planning in a university inevitably raises the question of the relationship between engineers and architects, not only in education and training, but also in practice. A building is not the work of an architect alone. Although he is responsible for the co-ordination of its design and the supervision of its construction, without the other members of the team it is doubtful whether the building would materialize or, if it did, it would hardly satisfy the client. At the design stage he relies on the structural engineer, the heating and ventilating engineer, the electrical engineer and the quantity surveyor. The contractor, supported by subcontractors, organizes the construction of the building under the clerk of works’ supervision on behalf of the architect. The same applies to the broader art and science of planning. On this enlarged scale of design the team embraces even more disciplines and requires the contributions of economists, geographers, sociologists, engineers (civil and traffic) and surveyors, as well as architects and town planners. It would, however, be sensible in this discussion to restrict our consideration of joint training to the field of building. Arthur Ling