The steel plate shear wall (SPSW) presents a viable structural system to resist lateral forces during earthquakes. A, SPSW is a lateral force resisting system (LFRS) composed of a thin steel web-plate bounded by and attached to a surrounding portal frame. As shown in the Figure, the frame beams are termed Horizontal Boundary Elements (HBEs) and the adjacent columns are the Vertical Boundary Elements (VBEs). The thin unstiffened web-plates are expected to buckle in shear at relatively low lateral load levels and develop tension field action for ductility and energy dissipation. …

This is a story about designing brick masonry curtainwalls. It is a story because the events did not all occur on the same project. They all happened, just on different projects.

For context and introduction, the author’s education is in solid mechanics followed by an early career in aerospace designing airplanes. Leaving the aerospace industry to design buildings wasn’t easy. …

During their service life, high-rise buildings and the associated nonstructural components endure various movements and deformations. Although the deformations and movements are not life threatening, inappropriate design of buildings and associated nonstructural components could induce expensive economic consequences in the long-run and, in order to ensure proper building behavior of the superstructures and the attached nonstructural elements, should not be ignored. In this article the possible deformations and movements of reinforced concrete high-rise buildings and the accommodation of the affected components are discussed. …

Over the past few decades, significant advances have been made in the areas of earthquake engineering and seismic design. A growing database of strong motion records, refined ground motion attenuation relationships, and probabilistic seismic hazard methodologies have led to an improved design basis for seismic events. …

In recent years, it has become more desirable, and in many cases necessary, for architects and engineers to design buildings and structural frames with beams and girders of limited depth. Shallower structural depth allows building floor-to-floor height to be lowered and the amount of materials used – such as exterior cladding, interior walls, partitions, and stairs – to be reduced. In high-rise building construction, it allows extra floors to be added within the proposed building height. On expansion projects, a shallower structural depth helps facilitate the need to match the existing floor elevations. …

Probably the most widely used value in a soil report is soil bearing capacity. The obvious reason is that basic examples given in most text books almost always use bearing capacity to calculate the plan dimension of a footing. Because of simplicity and ease of use, this method is still the fundamental soil parameter for foundation design. However, that simplicity assumes the footing will behave as a rigid body. That particular assumption works well in practice for small and single column footings. But for large and multi column foundations, most engineers prefer flexible analysis. …

There is an important design consideration for wood floor framing that is not likely to be found in building codes or design standards – differential deflection. This issue is often overlooked, but can lead to significant performance problems. Differential deflection, as described here, is the change in elevation from one framing member to the adjacent member. Differential deflection may escape consideration. Building code requirements and design standards for deflection typically pertain only to the deflection along the span length of an individual member. Problems related to differential deflection can arise when one long span member deflects in flexure, within building code limits, while the adjacent member does not, often due to different support conditions or stiffness (Figure 1). …

Steel roof and floor deck diaphragm design requires careful attention to load paths, stiffness variations, fastener types, and regional preferences… …

It’s amazing that something as simple and as common as wood-framed stair stringers do not yet have specific prescriptive code construction provisions. Despite the commonality of wood-framed stair stringers, they still suffer from structural performance issues which result in scenarios that range from cracked drywall to severe injuries. …