Part 1
This two-part series discusses resilience for engineering design practice. Part 1 includes an overview of the ASCE Code of Ethics, resilience concepts for design practice, and how the ASCE Report Card addresses resilience.
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While Airstrikes Rain Across the City of Kyiv
On October 10, 2022, Russia escalated its war against Ukraine with the largest wave of airstrikes against civilian infrastructure since the invasion began last February. Targets included energy utilities, apartment blocks, and houses. Dr. Kit Miyamoto led a team of global engineering experts working with the U.N. in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to assess infrastructure damages caused by the war.
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Numbers in computers can only be represented by a fixed number of digits. The predominant number type in Finite Element Method (FEM) software packages is Double-Precision, which is 8 bytes in size. This gives about 15 digits of accuracy. However, during the solution of FEM equations, numerical difficulties or errors may be encountered in certain modeling scenarios due to truncation and round-off errors. The introduction of the Quad-Precision number type, 16 bytes in size providing about a 34-digit accuracy, can reduce FEM solution errors. The author presents a few examples to illustrate the differences in using Double Precision and Quad Precision numbers.
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Two New Documents Support Designing with Stainless Steel
With the increasing focus on resilience, interest in stainless steel has likewise grown. As part of that growth, a new design specification for structural stainless steel and a new companion code of standard practice were approved by AISC in 2021. These two documents, Specification for Structural Stainless Steel Buildings (ANSI/AISC 370-21) and Code of Standard Practice for Structural Stainless Steel Buildings (AISC 313-21), are the first standards in the U.S. to address hot-rolled, extruded, and welded stainless steel sections. The new specification (AISC 370) builds on the first edition of AISC Design Guide 27: Structural Stainless Steel, published in 2013, updating it to incorporate the results of the latest worldwide research on the behavior of stainless steel structural elements. In addition, a new edition of AISC Design Guide 27 was published in April 2022, with extensive tables and supporting material to supplement the AISC 370 specification.
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Concluding our series on automation – December 2021 (Installment 1), March 2022 (2), June 2022 (3), September 2022 (4) – I sat down (virtually) in July 2022 with two more industry experts in innovation: Dr. Erica Fischer, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Oregon State University; and Ilana Danzig, Associate Principal at Aspect Structural Engineers. Below are highlights from our discussion.
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Building “Bridges” to a More Resilient Society
Are clients (and the general population) aware of how the infrastructure behaves when subjected to extreme events, the risks, and the consequences – and, more importantly, if they are, do they care? One can answer these questions with a categorically confident: “It depends!”
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A robust post-pandemic job market has triggered a high demand for design and construction expertise. In addition, an influx of federal funding further heightens demand.
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Alternative Building Materials
When it comes to impeding home-building growth, one does not need to look further than global supply chain issues. Closures in factories and transportation hubs have negatively affected an industry that relies on building materials sourced throughout the world. And while there is certainly no shortage of new housing demand here in the United States, there is a scarcity of the essential materials needed to build these dwellings.
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As a new engineer, I was at a site one afternoon struggling over a portion of a project not installed per plan. The contractors’ position was that the plan asked for something that was not done. The design team’s point was that they should have qualified their bid if the contractor knew this was not possible. My role was to defend specifying that the elevator guide rails for a 2-story wood framed building with less than 10-foot story heights needed to span floor-to-floor (i.e., a guide rail support tube would not be provided). While the details were eventually worked out, the outcome of this experience is the more important story.
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Achieving AESS and AESSS Goals
When properly executed, the decision to expose structural steel offers a powerful opportunity to express a project’s tectonics and aesthetic goals. The 2016 American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Code of Standard Practice for Steel Bridges and Buildings (ANSI/AISC 303) introduced the architecturally exposed structural steel (AESS) category system, a systematic method of communicating craftsmanship quality to support goals for the final appearance of the finished structure. Prior to 2016, the lack of a categorized approach uniformly accepted by the Architecture-Engineering-Construction industry posed challenges in communication between the design and construction team, as well as with Owners. Today, when properly understood and leveraged, the Category system can support project outcomes that meet designers’ intent, are properly budgeted during the bid process, and achieve ultimate aesthetic goals for which fabrication quality is a foundation.
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