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Engineering?
Civil engineering is considered the second-oldest engineering discipline, with military
engineering considered the oldest. Civil engineering is a professional discipline that
deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physically and naturally
built environment, especially public sector works such as roads, bridges, dams,
highways, airports, pipelines, sewage and drainage systems, railways, ports and all the
rest.
There are even geotechnical engineers that analyze the composition of soil to ensure
the safety and reliability of building foundations and retaining walls.
In this blog post, we’re focusing in on one particular aspect of civil engineering:
structural engineering. Structural engineering deals with the design and structural
analysis of buildings, bridges, towers, lighthouses, tunnels, and even off-shore
structures like oil rigs. Structural engineers may use some creativity to design a
structure with visual appeal, but they must also ensure that the structure is safe and
stable for its intended use. Keep reading to learn more about structural design in civil
engineering.
Civil engineers that design structure for construction projects must be excellent
problem solvers. The decisions that structural engineers make during the structural
design phase of the project will affect everything from the project cost and duration to
the ultimate safety and viability of the structure.
Below, we highlight some of the most important factors that structural engineers must
consider when designing a building.
A civil engineering designing a subway platform should ensure that the platform will
not collapse under the weight of thousands of passengers. A structural engineer
designing a railway system should use materials that will not be damaged when a
50,000-lb railway car is used on the tracks.
A structural designer must ensure that the train station they are building won’t
collapse when snow collects on its rooftops in the winter.
Direction: The direction of the force. A strong wind would be acting against the side of
the building, while the weight of a heavy snowfall would act downwards, in the
direction of gravity. Different systems of materials and reinforcements are required to
counteract different types of forces.
Position: The position on which the force acts. Structural engineers must assess the
effects of anticipated forces on each area of the building, not just on the building as a
whole.
Structural Elements Must Remain Stationary
If you’ve ever tried to build a tower out of rocks at the beach, you may have
encountered the important structural principle that elements of a structure must
remain stationary to ensure their stability. The first step is ensuring through
geotechnical engineering that the soil beneath the building provides a solid foundation
for construction. A solid foundation helps ensure that the structure itself is immovable
and that it can resist external forces.
For a structure to remain stationary, the sum of forces acting on it must always equal
zero. However, civil engineers know that external forces will be applied to the
structure throughout its operation. These can include live loads such as building
occupants and furniture or environmental loads like wind, snow and earthquakes.
In any case, effective structural design requires civil engineers to ensure that a
building can absorb applications of external force, maintaining its own equilibrium.
Just like a tree branch that doesn’t bend will break in the wind, a structure that can’t
absorb external forces is vulnerable to damage and instability.
-Strength, a measure of how well a material can resist an applied stress or load. The
opposite of strong is weak.
-Toughness, a measure of how much energy will cause a given material to crack. The
opposite of tough is brittle.
-Elasticity is a measure of how much a material can be stretched and still return to its
shape.
If you had a choice between a concrete construction and a steel construction, you’d
want to review the properties of both materials and determine how they would affect
the safety of your building. When you look up the specifications for a steel
construction, you realize that steel is more ductile – it can be plastic elongated by up
to 15% before fracturing, whereas concrete exhibits very little plasticity and fractures
immediately once its threshold for elastic stretch is exceeded – it is quite brittle.
You conclude that a material that won’t fracture under stress is a better option, and
you correctly choose steel as your construction material.
Summary
Structural design plays an important role in construction projects. Structural design is
conducted by a structural engineer whose role is to ensure the safety, stability and
performance of the structure. Civil engineers use structural analysis to assess the
forces that could act on a structure and to choose materials and reinforcements that
will effectively withstand those forces.
Structural engineers design buildings, towers, tunnels, bridges and other types of
structures through the knowledge and successful application of physics principles and
material science.