The Forth Bridge

For those unfamiliar with building in Scotland, important factors to be considered are - basic wind speed - rain - freezing conditions and the combined effect of these on buildings and materials. J.R. Scott

I was surprised and a little awestruck when the Scottish Branch requested me to write on the above theme. However, the Branch conjures up so many happy and fulfilling memories that the request could not be gainsaid. W.G.N. Geddes

It has long been convenient to assume ‘pinned’ or ‘fixed’ connections to simplify analysis for steel frame design. Until recently, there has been little interest in research on real behaviour of joints because of mathematical complexity of solutions. However, there is a revitalised interest in this topic because of cheap computing power and new Codes highlighting a number of grey areas of design. This paper discusses the effect of joints on a number of structures and attempts to show, by use of fixity factors and a modified moment distribution method, that analysis need not be difficult and that, even when full connection data are not known, the techniques may provide qualitative data of great practical value in many cases. R. Cunningham