The draft report ‘Engineering appraisal of sports grounds’ was discussed at a l-day seminar held at the Grosvenor Hotel, London, on 26 October 1989. It is the result of 3 years' work by an ad hoc committee set up after the Popplewell Inquiry had reported on the tragedies at Birmingham, Bradford, and Hysel. The finalised report will take account of views brought up at the seminar and aspects of Lord Justice Taylor’s Interim report that are still under consideration.
This paper addresses the finite element modelling of the dynamic characteristics of modern tall buildings of complex structural forms and compares the results obtained with those of full-scale testings. In order to facilitate reasonable finite element modellings, a computer program capable of treating large-scale tall building structures was developed. J.M. Ko, S.L. Lau and C.W. Wong
The paper reports the result of a live load survey on office buildings carried out in Sydney, Australia. Eleven office buildings with a total floor area of 144 136m2 were surveyed. On the basis of the survey data, parameters for a probabilistic live load model are established. The sustained load is observed to be better represented by the log-normal distribution with the spatially correlated assumption. Parameters for an extraordinary load model are also established from actual survey data. Extraordinary load cells are found to be much bigger, and thus the number of concentrated loads in a cell is also much higher than those assumed by previous workers. Three types of extraordinary load have been identified and their means and variances are also established. Mean lifetime maximum total load predicted by using the present survey live load model is larger than the UK and USA survey results, except for very large areas. Multiple-storey column load has also been investigated. E.C.C. Choi
For many years, we have been used to many energy campaigns (switch it off, conserve it, etc.) and, as a result, both legislation and the balance sheet have encouraged the design of energy efficient buildings. Indeed, this has developed much ingenuity in design concepts, a use of a wider range of materials with particular reference to their thermal efficiency, and (perhaps more important) a better and more fundamental understanding of the factors which may improve energy efficient design, i.e. the passive use of solar energy, etc. Ron Marsh
The Members’ Conference We have received only two responses to Mr D. J. Pearce ’s letter (17 October) which was concerned primarily with the question of conference fees, and both of these come from members living away from the U.K. Is there, indeed, as Brian Clancy commented, so little interest from our members in seeking to discuss Institution affairs? Donald Gudgeon lives in Perth, Australia: Three cheers for Mr Pearce’s letter. I have already written some time ago to IEAust on the waste of conferences for conferences’ sake. Verulam