All articles published in the October 2015 issue.
Publish Date – 1 October 2015
The engineers and architect behind the award-winning Terminal 2 at Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, Russia, describe the design ambitions, challenges posed by snow, modelling techniques and innovative structural solutions that resulted in the terminal’s folded, angular roof.
Sean Brady examines how engineers learn from failure and discovers that frustration is key.
The series from insurance broker Griffiths & Armour examines certification and warns consultants to consider carefully what they are being asked to sign.
Alastair Soane stresses the need for diligent risk analysis, training and application of best practice when operating mobile or tower cranes.
Although the hazards arising from any works on operational railway sites are assessed to be considerable, in the UK Network Rail has taken comprehensive measures to manage risks by putting in place compulsory systems and procedures.
This article provides further information on the manufacture, detailing and erection of CLT constructions.
Our built heritage is a finite resource stretching back thousands of years. Protecting and conserving this heritage is a challenge requiring knowledge, skills and experience, together with an ability to bring practical engineering judgement and often creative and imaginative solutions. This paper sets out the challenges faced by engineers and some of the approaches taken in the appraisal and protection of ruins.
The yield-line method of analysis provides a powerful means of identifying the ultimate load-carrying capacity of reinforced concrete slabs. Benefits of the yield-line method are that it will often identify additional reserves of strength when applied to the analysis of existing slabs, and to highly economic slabs when used in design. Traditionally a hand-based method, the yield-line method is easy to apply to problems involving simple slab geometries and loading regimes. However, when these become more complex it can be difficult to identify the critical yield-line pattern. To address this, the method has now been systematically automated. The automated method quickly identifies the critical mechanism (or a close approximation of this) and corresponding load-carrying capacity, providing engineers with a powerful new computer-based tool for the analysis and design of concrete slabs. In this article, the discontinuity layout optimisation (DLO) procedure which has been used to automate the yield-line method is briefly described and then applied to various example problems.
Synopses of the latest papers accepted for publication in the Institution's new research journal, Structures. Access to Structures is free to all during 2015. From 2016, Institution members will continue to receive free access as one of their membership benefits. The journal is available online at: www.elsevier.com/locate/structures
At just 27, Claire Gott has set up a charity, is on the ICE Council and a Green Construction Board working group, and is a design manager for one of the great challenges of the age in the UK – the redevelopment of London Bridge Station. Oh, and she has an MBE. Jackie Whitelaw went to meet WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff ’s engineering dynamo.
Andrew Minson does not believe that the requirement to receive a CE marked product where possible should change the way structural engineers specify products (with one notable exception), but is keen to hear what others think.
In the light of this year’s earthquake in Nepal, Harsha Mehta argues that the increasing global frequency of extreme events requires structural engineers to move away from prescriptive codes to a performance-based design process.
This detailed book will be useful to young engineers who have just started using Eurocodes for steel or concrete structures, concludes Roger Johnson, although it contains too much elementary information for the more experienced engineer.