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The Structural Engineer, Volume 62, Issue 2, 1984
Vibrations in buildings Dr. A. W. Irwin of Heriot- Watt University, in his capacity as Chairman of the British Standards Panel that deals with ‘Human exposure to vibration and shock in buildings’, has written to us expressing his interest in the Building Research Establishment Digest No. 278, circulated with The Structural Engineer for October 1983. His letter reads: While I am glad to see that the BRE is taking an interest in the subject of vibration with the issue of the Digest entitled ‘Vibrations: buildings and human response’, I am rather doubtful about the value of this document and wonder whether it is not misleading in some regards. Verulam
Prof. A. Bolton (F) (Heriot-Watt University): You have all seen slides of the appearance of the stands, but unless you have actually been seated there, I do not think you can fully appreciate the excellent quality from the spectator’s point of view. I was most impressed, not only by the finished effect but also by the great care that went into the design.
When a damaged building is founded on clay and roots have been found at or near foundations, it can be considered a certainty that the roots have, in some way, contributed to the damage. There may, of course, be other contributory factors such as uneven soils, under-design of foundations (unlikely in smaller structures), deep seated lenses of softer materials, and so on. It is not always easy to decide whether the damage has been caused by subsidence or by ground heave, and this writer has come across one block of flats in which one end was affected by ground heave and the other by subsidence. The pattern of cracking will usually provide an indication and the age of the building and the state of the roots will be an additional pointer. It is not possible, in an article of this length, to describe accurately the differences in crack pattern (if it is possible to describe these at all); neither is it possible to give specific advise on where to dig trial holes, the location of these being one of the most important arts in the whole process. Russell G. Grahame