Sandwich panels consisting of two relatively thin metal faces and a foamed plastic core have been finding increasing use as the cladding of buildings. They combine the advantages of strength, stiffness, lightness, and excellent thermal properties, and thus represent the optimum use of the various components of a complete cladding system. Their excellent structural performance depends on the two faces and the core acting together as a composite element, and this raises unique design problems, not all of which may be fully understood by those responsible for their manufacture, design, and use. This paper represents an attempt to summarise the main considerations and includes proposals for rational design procedures. The inspiration for much of this material has been found in the deliberations of European Convention for Constructional Steelwork (ECCS), Technical Working Group TWG 7.4, with the result that there is a significant international component to the opinions expressed. Professor J.M. Davies
Mr C. R. Macdonald (Secretary-General, National Bahá’'í Assembly of the United Kingdom): The Bahá’'ís have very good reason to be grateful to the Flint & Neill Partnership who have, I suppose, become specialists in the construction of Bahá’'í temples. There will of course be many more. Each of the 148 national Bahá’'í Councils has an earmarked temple site, and each one of those will be the mother Bahá’'í temple of that particular country, so one can visualise a succession of Bahá’'í temples mushrooming in the future, and I hope that Flint & Neill will be associated with many of them.
On 28 October 1987, in the elegant surroundings of the Cafe Royal in London, a l-day symposium addressed the problems, both real and perceived, of high-rise housing. Speakers from a wide range of backgrounds considered the past and future for this once popular, but now much deprecated, style of residential development. Cyril Morgan OBE(formerly, Secretary of the Institution), who chaired the morning session, began by flattering the assembled gathering, suggesting that most were too young to remember the Ronan Point collapse with any clarity!
The paper sets out a design method for short and slender masonry walls and columns of geometric cross-section which are subjected to vertical loads. A variety of cross-section shapes is considered, including such standard cases as diaphragm walls and walls with piers. M.E. Phipps
Hogging moment reinforcement in T-beams We have had three responses to Mr A. E. Archibald ’s tale of woe (reported in our August issue) from his graduate assistant days about the non-acceptance by his chief of his proposal to spread hogging reinforcement in T-beams out sideways into the slab. Mr E. A. F. Robinson, of Surbiton, expresses his reservations about Mr Archibald’s proposals because of the shear stresses that would be induced in the slab. Verulam