Issue 15

The department and the Instutition The Department of Civil Engineering was established in 1943 under Professor W. Fisher Cassie who, soon afterwards, chaired an ‘exploratory committee’ which led to the formation of the Northern Counties Branch of the Institution in 1947, when Professor Cassie himself was elected the first Branch Chairman. Thus the department has benefited from the close link with the Institution ever since its formative years, and has always regarded it as important to maintain a strong link with the Institution. David Lee, a Past President of the Institution, is our Visiting Professor in Structural Engineering. Two members of our staff serve on the Institution’s Northern Counties Branch Committee. The writer himself has twice served as Branch Chairman and is currently a member of Council and several committees, including the Executive Committee. Every year, the Northern Counties Branch holds on of its meetings at the department; and the events have been well supported by the students. In addition, the teaching staff attend many of the Branch meetings and set examination questions on the lectures, so that, in practice, every 3rd-year student attends on average two of the Branch meetings. Professor F.K. Kong

Mr R. Campion (British Railways Board) The authors are to be congratulated on preparing an alternative design for this bridge, within a very short timescale, that managed to combine both visual and structural elegance. It was a fitting reward that the bridge should have received a commendation in the Structural Steel Design Award scheme.

The paper describes an experimental investigation into the behaviour of four full-scale composite beams. Each beam comprised a slab, cast using profiled steel decking, acting with a steel universal beam section. The connection between slab and beam was made using stud shear connectors welded through the profiled steel sheeting. Relatively few connectors were used as the main aim of the investigation was to study the behaviour of such beams with shear connection levels of less than 50 % of that required to ensure full shear connection. A secondary aim of the work was to investigate whether or not the web-cleated end connections acted as pinned supports as assumed in the design. Comparisons between roller supports and web-cleated connections were therfore made during testing. Measurements of the natural frequency of the beams were also made. H.D. Wright and R.W. Francis

The results and consequences from the BRE research programme on the structural effects of alkali-silica reaction (ASR) are described, centred on the testing of specially produced and conditioned, full-scale prestressed beams. N. Clayton, R.J. Currie and R.M. Moss

What follows is based on a contribution I was asked to make to the Institution’s Informal Study Group ‘Qualitative Analysis of Structural Behaviour’ at a meeting held to consider ‘Graduate understanding of structural behaviour’. My task was to give the perspective of a large practice; in developing such a perspective, I consulted many colleagues and found a remarkable unanimity of opinion. Nevertheless, the views expressed are not those of the Ove Arup Partnership, but my own. P.M. Morreau