Underground Building Reclaims a Landfill
Oregon's Multnomah County built a road and maintenance facility underground to begin reclaiming an old landfill site. More than 600 precast concrete components make up the...
Redecking with Precast Keeps Traffic Moving
The Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. could not be closed to traffic while a new deck was constructed. The engineers designed a precast prestressed and post-tensioned...
Engineering for Steel Construction
Establishing Patterns of Building Failures
Establishing statistical patterns of building failures can help engineers and architects prevent similar failures in the future and also reduce litigation. The Architecture and Engineering...
Geotechnical Innovations: Why Seldom Used in Highways?
Ground improvement methods introduced within the past decade to American geotechnical engineers offer cost savings, ease of construction and reduced construction time. Amont these innovations...
1986: The Year of the Connection
It is proposed that 1986 be designated the Year of the Connection and that the American Society of Civil Engineers take a leading role in overcoming problems now associated with structural...
Civil Engineering Productivity�Can It Be Boosted?
In the past 20 years, construction labor productivity has declined while private business productivity has risen. And construction's percent of U.S. GNP has dropped nearly...
Structural Steel Details: Comments on Divided Responsibility
Five readers responded to an article on responsibility for structural steel details published in
Fluid/Structure Interaction During Seismic Excitation
Hydrodynamic loading and other fluid/structure interaction effects need to be considered in the design of structures which contain, surround, or are submerged in fluids when subject to...
Probabilistic Mechanics and Structural Reliability
Computing in civil engineering has gone through serious adjustments in recent years. With the advent of computer-aided design and drafting systems (CAD) and microcomputers, computing capability...
Automated Control and Robotics for Construction
This paper addresses the potential for automated process control and robotics for remote, large-scale field operations such as those on construction engineering projects. Combining selected...
Reinforcing Roof Truss Frames Under Load
Without altering the roof structure of an industrial boiler plant, a long-span steel truss frame was modified in place to support heavier loads. The owners of an industrial boiler plant...
Look Again at Quality Circles
Companies in many countries have tried or are trying quality control circles as a major part of their productivity improvement programs. A quality control circle uses the experience and...
Managing Overhead in Consulting Engineering Firms
One of the ways an engineering firm can maintain - or increase - profitability is through judicious management of overhead. Yet various industry studies suggest that the typical engineering...
Computing in Civil Engineering
A broad spectrum of computer applications in civil engineering is covered in 73 papers presented at the Third Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering. Emphasis is on microcompters...
Probabilistic Nature of Soil Properties
The integrity of a soil material is defined not only by its compositional components but also by the constituent natural bonds and the resultant interactions between the various constituents...
An Extreme-Value Model for Strength of Stiff Clays
The role of the distribution function in the safety analysis of soil structures is briefly discussed. Comparison of the two statistical distributions - normal and Weibull - reveals that...
Steel Girder Bridge Sets Record Length
The Veterans Memorial Bridge at Ottawa, Ill., is the longest plate girder, stringer type bridge in the country with spans of 385, 510 and 305 ft. Value engineering played an important...
Limited Field Inspection vs. Public Safety
The traditional role of the design engineer in providing field inspection services has been an important component of public safety in the construction industry. The various aspects of...
Building Failures�Construction Related Problems and Solutions
A leadership group of representatives from the fields of structural design, construction, building inspection, the law and insurance agreed that if five changes are made in the way building...
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