Evaluation of Double Shear-Joints for Timber Structures using Pultruded GRP Dowels, and Implications

British Standards: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly BSI finally responds to considerable criticism through no less a personage than its Director, IStructE Past President, David Lazenby: I have been struck by several emotions as I have read some recent items in The Structural Engineer: in particular, the ‘Viewpoint’ by Joe Locke and the comments in Verulam on design Codes in general. My emotions have ranged from initial surprise (and even annoyance), through amused frustration, to partial sadness.

This paper traces the development and realisation of a unique and versatile structural system created for the recently-opened Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. The system developed is best described as a discretised lattice grid in structural steel and may be applied to any arbitrary free-form shape. The application of the system to the fluid and curving forms of the landmark Bilbao Museum is presented, along with a description of the role of the computer on the project. Finally, details of the steel fabrication and erection concept for the structure are described, as well as the key engineering and analysis studies that were performed. H. Lyenger, L. Novak, R. Sinn and J. Zils

Although technology has advanced, there is increasing evidence that analysis programs are being used without an understanding of the actual behaviour of real structures and with an unrealistic confidence in the results. So said the Steel Construction Institute in 1995. Richard Dobson