Issue 9

All the articles from the September 2018 issue.

The Kenneth Severn Award is an annual essay competition for young engineers, with the question set by the President. Here, winner Radu Trancau looks forward to a bright future and considers what steps structural engineers must take to get there.

The Tianjin CTF Finance Centre is a 530m super-tall building nearing completion in the People's Republic of China. For a building of this height, wind forces and associated wind-induced motion in the upper levels can become dominant factors in the structural design of its foundations and lateral-stability system.

This article describes how an initial aerodynamic shape-optimisation workshop allowed the design team to develop a finely tuned architectural form capable of minimising the detrimental effects of vortex shedding.

Jonny Yusuf looks at communication as a professional engineer, offering advice on how we might communicate more effectively.

Professor Richard Clegg and Simon Pitchers aim to highlight ‘risk literacy’, show its increasing relevance to the profession and stimulate thinking about how society might benefit from engineers being better able to explain risk.

This Technical Guidance Note aims to clarify the term 'simple connection' by explaining its use when designing connections within steel frames. Additionally, guidance is offered on different types of simple connection and the design checks that need to be carried out.

Stephen Hargreaves discusses three evolving areas of practice that bring their own risks.

Kate Leighton asks whether BIM is really here to stay, and whether enough attention is being devoted to the long-term storage and accessibility of BIM files.

This interesting, well-illustrated book will be useful to engineers as a means of knowing what is important to consider in a holistic risk-based design against different natural hazards, but it is not a design guide, concludes Gerard Canisius.

Defining the boundaries of responsibility for structural engineers' duties, further calls for simplifying safety margins in Eurocodes, and some thoughts on fire engineering in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy are discussed.

Upcoming events at HQ and around the Regional Groups.

Papers recently published in Structures – the Research Journal of The Institution of Structural Engineers.

Access to Structures is free to Institution members (excluding Student members) as one of their membership benefits, with access provided via the ‘My account’ section of the Institution website. The journal is available online at: www.structuresjournal.org

This contribution from Peter Bullman relates to deflection in a simply supported timber beam.