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Engineering is the application of scientific and technical knowledge to solve human problems. Engineers use imagination, judgment and reasoning to apply science, technology, mathematics, and practical experience. The result is the engineering design, production, and operation of useful objects or processes. Engineering has several major fields, of which 19 major ones according to the National Society of Professional Engineers are: Aerospace engineering Agricultural engineering Biomedical engineering Chemical engineering Civil engineering (general & structural) Computer engineering Control Systems Electrical & electronic engineering Environmental engineering Fire protection engineering Geotechnical engineering Industrial engineering Manufacturing engineering Mechanical engineering Mining engineering Nuclear engineering Petroleum engineering Sanitation engineering Traffic engineering
CIVIL ENGINEERING:
Civil Engineering is a broad field of engineering that deals with the planning, construction, and maintenance of fixed structures, or public works, as they are related to earth, water, or civilization and their processes. Most civil engineering today deals with roads, railways, structures, water supply, sewer, flood control and traffic. In essence, civil engineering may be regarded as the profession that makes the world a more agreeable place to live in.
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING:
In the field of civil engineering, structural engineering is concerned with structural design and structural analysis of structural components of buildings and non-building structures. This involves calculating the stresses and forces that affect or arise within a structure, and designing structural components that are able to withstand those forces. Major design concerns are building seismic resistant structures and seismically retrofitting existing structures.
Structural engineers ensure that their designs satisfy a given design intent predicated on safety (i.e. structures do not collapse without due warning) and on serviceability (i.e. floor vibration and building sway are not uncomfortable to occupants). In addition, structural engineers are responsible for making efficient use of funds and materials to achieve these over-arching goals. Typically, entry-level structural engineers may design simple beams, columns, and floors of a new building, including calculating the loads on each member and the load capacity of various building materials (steel, timber, masonry, concrete). An experienced engineer would tend to render more difficult structures, considering physics of moisture, heat and energy inside the building components. Structural loads on structures are generally classified as: live loads such as the weight of occupants and furniture in a building, the forces of wind or weights of water, the forces due to seismic activity such as an earthquake, dead loads including the weight of the structure itself and all major architectural components and live roof loads such as material and manpower loading the structure during construction. Structural engineers mainly fight against the forces of nature like winds, earthquakes and Tsunamis. In recent years, however, reinforcing structures against sabotage has taken on increased importance.
ENGINEERING DESIGN:
The task of the engineer is to identify, understand, and integrate the constraints on a design in order to produce a successful result, which is called engineering design. It is usually not enough to build a technically successful product; it must also meet further requirements. Constraints may include available resources, physical or technical limitations, flexibility for future modifications and additions, and other factors, such as requirements for cost, and the ability to market, produce, and service. By understanding the constraints, engineers derive specifications for the limits within which a viable structure may be produced and operated. Engineers typically attempt to predict how well their designs will perform to their specifications prior to full-scale production. They use, among other things: prototypes, scale models, simulations, destructive tests, nondestructive tests, and stress tests. Creating an appropriate mathematical model of a problem allows them to analyze it (sometimes definitively), and to test potential solutions. Usually multiple reasonable solutions exist, so engineers must evaluate the different design choices on their merits and choose the solution that best meets their requirements. Engineers as professionals take seriously their responsibility to produce designs that will perform as expected and will not cause unintended harm to the public at large. Engineers typically include a factor of safety in their designs to reduce the risk of unexpected failure. However, the greater the safety factor, the less efficient the design may be. As with all modern scientific and technological endeavors, computers and software play an increasingly important role. Numerical methods and simulations can help predict design performance more accurately than previous approximations. Computer models of designs can be checked for flaws without having to make expensive and time-consuming prototypes. Of late, the use of finite element method analysis (FEM analysis or FEA) software to study stress, temperature, etc has gained importance. In addition, a variety of software is available to analyze dynamic systems.
EARTHQUAKE:
Earthquakes are phenomena that result from the sudden release of stress in rocks that radiate seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes may manifest themselves by a shaking or displacement of the ground and sometimes tsunamis, which may lead to loss of life and destruction of property. Most naturally occurring earthquakes are related to the tectonic nature of the Earth. Such earthquakes are called tectonic earthquakes. The Earth's lithosphere is a patch-work of plates in
slow but constant motion caused by the heat in the Earth's mantle and core. Plate boundaries glide past each other, creating frictional stress. When the frictional stress exceeds a critical value, called local strength, a sudden failure occurs. The boundary of tectonic plates along which failure occurs is called the fault plane. When the failure at the fault plane results in a violent displacement of the Earth's crust, the elastic strain energy is released and elastic waves are radiated, thus causing an earthquake.
Figure 2: Earths lithosphere tectonic plates boundaries. The majority of tectonic earthquakes originate at depths not exceeding a few tens of miles. Earthquakes occurring at boundaries of tectonic plates are called interplate earthquakes, while the less frequent events that occur in the interior of the lithospheric plates are called intraplate earthquakes. Earthquakes occur on a daily basis around the world, most detected only by seismometers and causing no damage. Large earthquakes however can cause serious destruction and massive
loss of life through a variety of agents of damage, including fault rupture, vibratory ground motion (shaking), inundation (tsunami or dam failure), various kinds of permanent ground failure (liquefaction, landslides), and fire or a release of hazardous materials. Most large earthquakes are accompanied by other, smaller ones that can occur either before or after the main shock; these are called foreshocks and aftershocks, respectively. While almost all earthquakes have aftershocks, foreshocks occur in only about 10% of events.
Figure 3: Acceleration, Inertial Forces. To illustrate the process of inertia generated strains within a structure, we can consider the simplest kind of structure imaginable--a simple, perfectly rigid block of stone (See Figure 2). During an earthquake, if this block is simply sitting on the ground without any attachment to it, the block will move freely in a direction opposite to that of the ground motion, and with a force proportional to the mass and acceleration of the block. If the same block, however, is solidly founded in the ground and no longer able to move freely, it must in some way absorb the inertial force internally. In Figure 2, this internal uptake of force is shown to result in cracking near the base of the block.
Of course, real buildings do not respond as simply as described above. There are a number of important characteristics common to all buildings which further affect and complicate a building's response in terms of the accelerations it undergoes, and the deformations and damages that it suffers. The impact of an earthquake is determined by these factors: Earthquake details - magnitude, type, location, or depth Geologic conditions - distance from the epicenter, path of the seismic waves, types of soil, water saturation of soil Social conditions - quality of construction, preparedness of the community, time of day (e.g. rush hour)
Earthquakes can cause more damage and more deaths in some parts of the world primarily because the buildings are poorly designed the buildings are poorly constructed seismic issues for the region have not been considered population density.
When engineers design a building, they consider a variety of important factors: Shape of the building: different shaped buildings behave differently. Geometric shapes such as a square or rectangle usually perform better than buildings in the shape of an L, T, U, H, +, O, or a combination of these. Various materials used to construct the building(s) can be used (alone or in combination): steel, concrete, wood, brick. Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. It is comprised of sand, gravel, and crushed stone, held together with cement. Each material behaves differently. Ductile materials perform better than brittle ones. Examples of ductile materials include steel and aluminum. Examples of brittle materials include brick, stone and unstrengthened concrete. Height of the building. Different heights shake at different frequencies. Soil beneath the building. Buildings constructed on soft soil force may suffer from a stronger ground motion, and those on hard rocks are subject to high frequency waves. Regional topography. Buildings on a hill are likely to slide down as the earthquake strikes. Magnitude and duration of the earthquake. Direction and frequency of shaking. The number of earthquakes the building has previously had and the kinds of damage suffered, if any. While the building may seem undamaged under weak to moderate earthquakes, the resulting small damages and cracks make it more vulnerable to future events. Intended function of the building (e.g. hospital, fire station, office building). If the building is an important one, or the buildings performance is essential in case of destructive earthquakes, the engineers should design a stronger building which, on the other hand, will be more expensive. Proximity to other buildings.
Financial limitations. Of course by spending a lot of money on a building, one can have a very strong building, but it is the engineers task to make the most out of the least resources.
Engineers standard approach to earthquake resistant design of buildings requires providing the building with strength, stiffness and inelastic (unrecoverable or permanent) deformation capacity, which are great enough to withstand a given level of earthquake-generated force. This is generally accomplished by selecting an appropriate structural configuration and carefully detailing the structural members, such as beams and columns, and the connections between them. In more advanced engineering approaches the engineers not only strengthen the building, but try the amount of force transmitted to the main structural system. One of these methods is base isolation, which directly reduces the effect of earthquake on the building. Another approach can be putting advanced devices such as dampers in the building, which counter the effect of earthquake, and reduce the amount of forces applied on the main structure. Next, we briefly introduce some principles that should be considered in an earthquake resistant building design.
These same elements are also basic parts of an architect's structural "vocabulary." The choice of the appropriate lateral load resisting system for any particular building is thus highly dependent upon the architectural concept of the building. Of course, a building always possesses floors and a roof. But the earthquake resistant characteristics of these basic elements are highly variable. Not only that, the building's horizontal elements can be supported by a wide variety of wall and frame types or wall-frame combinations, the choice of which is usually dictated by considerations other than earthquake resistance. For instance, some buildings such as a warehouse or a parking garage must have a large open floor space--which means that roof and floors of such structures will not be provided with as much vertical support from beneath as they might be otherwise. The engineer-designer in charge of making a building earthquake resistant must therefore choose a combination of structural elements which will most favorably balance the demands of earthquake resistance, building cost, building use, and architectural design.
DIAPHRAGMS
Diaphragms are horizontal resistance elements, generally floors and roofs that transfer the lateral forces between the vertical resistance elements (shear walls or frames). Basically, a diaphragm acts as a horizontal I-beam. That is, the diaphragm itself acts as the web of the beam and its edges act as flanges.
SHEAR WALLS
Shear walls are vertical walls that are designed to receive lateral forces from diaphragms and transmit them to the ground. The forces in these walls are predominantly shear forces in which the fibers within the wall try to slide past one another. When you build a house of cards, you design a shear wall structure, and you soon learn that sufficient card "walls" must be placed at right angles to one another or the house will collapse.
Figure 6: Shear Walls. If you were to connect your walls together with tape, it is easy to see that the strength of this house of cards would immediately become greatly increased. This illustrates a very important point: In general, the earthquake resistance of any building is highly dependent upon the connections joining the building's larger structural members, such as walls, beams, columns and floor-slabs. Shear walls, in particular, must be strong in themselves and also strongly connected to each other and to the horizontal diaphragms. In a simple building with shear walls at each end, ground motion enters the building and creates inertial forces that move the floor diaphragms. This movement is resisted by the shear walls and the forces are transmitted back down to the foundation.
BRACED FRAMES
Braced frames act in the same manner as shear walls, but they may offer lower resistance depending on their details of their design and construction. Bracing generally takes the form of steel rolled sections, circular bar sections, or tubes. Vibration may cause the bracing to elongate
or compress, in which case it will lose its effectiveness and permit large deformations or collapse of the vertical structure. Ductility therefore must be designed into the bracing to create a safe assembly.
Figure 7: Beam-Column Joint, Moment-Resisting Frame. Architecturally, moment resistant frames offer a certain advantage over shear walls or braced frames because they tend to provide structures that are much more unobstructed internally than shear wall structures, which facilitates the design of accompanying architectural elements such as exterior walls, partitions, and ceilings and the placement of building contents such as furniture and loose equipment. Nevertheless, moment resistant frames require special construction and detailing and, therefore, are more expensive than shear walls or braced frames.
BASE ISOLATION
It is easiest to see this principle at work by referring directly to the most widely used of these advanced techniques, which is known as base isolation. A base isolated structure is supported by a series of bearing pads which are placed between the building and the building's foundation (See Figure 6). A variety of different types of base isolation bearing pads have now been developed.
Figure 8: Base-Isolated and Fixed-Base Buildings. For our example, we'll discuss lead-rubber bearings. These are among the frequently-used types of base isolation bearings (See Figure 7). A lead-rubber bearing is made from layers of rubber sandwiched together with layers of steel. In the middle of the bearing is a solid lead "plug." On top and bottom, the bearing is fitted with steel plates which are used to attach the bearing to the building and foundation. The bearing is very stiff and strong in the vertical direction, but flexible in the horizontal direction.
Figure 10: Base-Isolated, Fixed-Base Buildings. It is important to know that the inertial forces which the building undergoes are proportional to the building's acceleration during ground motion. It is also important to realize that buildings don't actually shift in only one direction. Because of the complex nature of earthquake ground motion, the building actually tends to vibrate back and forth in varying directions. So, Figure 8 is really a kind of "snapshot" of the building at only one particular point of its earthquake response.
building's vibrations. Damping is the fundamental property of all vibrating bodies which tends to absorb the body's energy of motion, and thus reduce the amplitude of vibrations until the body's motion eventually ceases.
Viscous Dampers: are devices that show only damping, and utilize the forced movement of fluids within the damper
FLOORS:
2 mm Lauan Plywood 30 cm 30 cm - The structure has 5 stories Mass: 275 g (0.6 lb ) Additional Mass: 490 g (1.08 lb )
COLUMNS:
5 mm -Diameter Hardwood Dowels At least 4, up to 16 columns are allowed Area: 17.81 mm
2 4 2
CONNECTIONS:
Wood Glue or Hot Melt Glue
EXPLANATION OF PROPERTIES:
Now, we briefly introduce the properties listed above, to point out their performance to the engineer, who is responsible in the selection of appropriate components and configurations.
MASS: is a property of a physical object that quantifies the amount of matter and energy it contains. Unlike weight, the mass of something stays the same regardless of location. During an earthquake, the ground acceleration results in inertial forces to be produced in masses present in the structure. The more the mass, the more the force will be, and hence, stronger elements are required to handle it during an earthquake. AREA: is a physical quantity expressing the size of a part of a surface. Larger areas of the same material normally produce more resistance to loads, but the shape of the part is also important in determination of its stiffness. AREA MOMENT OF INERTIA: is a property of a shape that is used to predict its resistance to bending and deflection. Shapes of the same areas and materials may have different moments of inertia, implying different resistance to external forces. MODULUS OF ELASTICITY: is the mathematical description of an object or substance's tendency to be deformed when a force is applied to it. Theoretically, it can be defined as the amount of force required to reduce the length of an object with unit area and length to zero. As this definition suggests, stiffer materials exhibit higher values elasticity modulus.
DAMPING: is any effect that tends to reduce the amplitude of oscillations of an oscillatory system. All structures demonstrate damping in a variety of ways, as no oscillation will last forever in any system. Damping ratio is a numerical quantity showing the damping as a percentage of a critical damping, which is enough to prevent any oscillation in the system. Real values of damping in civil engineering structures range from 2% to 10% of the critical value, depending on the material and geometric properties, as well as excitation severity. Supplemental damping for reduction of oscillation is possible through installation of special devices called dampers in the building. NATURAL FREQUENCY: is the oscillation rate at which the structure tends to oscillate. This property depends on the material and geometric properties of the elements, as well as the overall configuration of structure, connection properties, and the amount of mass present in the building. A specific structure demonstrates several natural frequencies and their corresponding mode shapes (oscillation form). When the natural frequency of the excitation gets closer to the natural frequency of the building, resonance occurs, which results in increased drifts and accelerations of the structure.
EARTHQUAKE RECORDS:
The earthquakes that are selected to be applied to the building are the 1940 El Centro, 1994 Northridge, and 1995 Kobe records. These data are actually recorded during the abovementioned earthquakes. The first one happened in Imperial Valley, CA, and was one of the first earthquakes to be accurately recorded by the pre-installed instruments. The other two are stronger than El Centro, but they happen less frequently. Each earthquake has specific properties that make it different from others, and may affect the building in a very different way. The problem is now to design a building, using the material whose properties were mentioned above, to suffer the least damage under these earthquakes. As the El Centro record is weaker than the others and its probability of occurrence is more, the building should be designed to remain undamaged. The other two earthquakes, however, are too strong for a building to remain undamaged, as it is too expensive to design a building that survives any earthquake. So standards generally require the buildings to be designed in such a way that they dont collapse under strong earthquakes, but they may have some damage at the end. This shows the importance of the inelastic deformation capacity of a building that allows it to deform, but not collapse.
TESTING BUILDINGS:
A variety of experimental methods exist for testing buildings or building components under the effect of earthquakes. These methods range from application of forces by actuators to largescale shake table tests. In a shake table test, a reduced-scale model of building will be placed on a platform that can simulate a pre-recorded earthquake by moving in horizontal and vertical directions. Simplified versions of these shake tables are able to move in one direction only, and have limited force and displacement capacity. As Figure 11 shows, there are some additional masses attached to each floor, to represent the effect of entities present in any building, such as walls, appliances and furniture. The deformations and accelerations of test structures are measured by the instruments that are mounted on the system. These measurements give valuable information to the engineer, that helps predict the structural behavior under a real earthquake.