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The Structural Engineer

The Department of Civil Engineering is part of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Wales, Swansea. Other departments in the Faculty cover the disciplines of chemical, electrical and electronic, materials and mechanical engineering. M.M.K. Lee

The Structural Engineer

The new Millennium Stadium is currently under construction in Cardiff. The fourth Rugby World Cup, hosted by the Welsh Rugby Union in October 1999 will be its first major event. What will be the UK’s first closing-roof sports stadium is designed by Lobb Sports Architecture and WS Atkins.

The Structural Engineer

From the Hong Kong airport to the Channel Tunnel to the Millennium Dome, the excellence of British structural engineers is clear to see. Innovative in their design, modern in their construction techniques, and uncompromising in their standards, Britain has good reason to be proud of its engineers. Lord Sainsbury

The Structural Engineer

Sports stadia are being renewed, or built from scratch, all over the country as demand grows and grows for mass public sporting and other events. Football and pop concerts are big business requiring media coverage; the public demands greater comfort and safety than that afforded by a standing space; corporate ticket holders require ever more sophisticated facilities. And the regulators demand ever higher safety standards. Kathy Stansfield

The Structural Engineer

Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Alton Towers haven’t seen anything like this. The London Eye, when completed, will be the fourth highest structure in the Capital, with a wheel diameter of 135m suspended dramatically by the River Thames on a cantilevered spindle over 22m long. This spectacular structure will dominate the view from the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben on the north side of the river, and from the former County Hall building, which now houses two hotels and the London Aquarium, on the south side. John Roberts

The Structural Engineer

In the UK, there is an urgent current need to assess the serviceability of many masonry arch bridges as a result of imminent increases in permitted heavy vehicle axle weights within the EU. Vibration techniques, along with some others, can be used to assess the integrity of these structures. The arch ring, as the fundamental loadbearing component of these structures, is of particular interest. Insufficient attention has been paid in the past to the measurement and categorisation of the diferent types of modes of vibration of these structures and the ordering of their successive natural frequencies. This paper investigates the vibration behaviour of segmental arch rings of a range of realistic proportions and the corresponding variations of modal shapes and frequencies. Good comparisons are obtained in some key cases between the results from the modern finite element (FE) method and older previous work. The eflect of variations in the proportions of the arch ring on the natural frequencies is shown graphically, and there is discussion about the corresponding mode shapes. A.J. Pretlove and J.C.A. Ellick

The Structural Engineer

Awarded the prestigious Swiss Prix Fédéraux des Beaux-Arts 1998 and the German Bauwelt Award 1999, the Buchholz Sports Centre was built following a successful architectural design competition and complements the Sports Complex of Buchholz in the town of Uster, near Zurich in Switzerland. It cost £3.6 million and was completed in 1998. Camenzind Gräfensteiner

The Structural Engineer

Hipped roofs A number of members have contributed to this discussion. David Cuntrell writes from Norfolk: I am frequently faced with assessing the overall stability of hipped end conservatories, constructed in a variety of materials. These are often built or proposed with few or nonexistent eaves ties and bracing. This usually results in the design of rigid joints for the eaves ring-beam, to-make the structure ‘work’ (a difficult task when using small timber section sizes!).