Bicycle Transportation
A Civil Engineer's Notebook for Bicycle Facilities
The planning and design of bicycle facilities are examined, with the facilities divided into these topics: pavements, drainage, traffic controls, amenities, lighting, parking, landscaping,...
Roof Design: Avoid Ponding by Sloping to Drain
Roofing contractors recommend that roofs possess enough slope to permit complete drainage within 48 hours of rainfall. Otherwise ponds will form which can cause leakage and even contribute...
America's Covered Bridges
Soon after the Revolutionary War, bridge construction became more important in the United States. Early builders developed by trail and error an economical, permanent, long-span covered...
The Long Road to Regulatory Reform
A brief report on ASCE's actions to encourage the regulatory reform movement in Washington. Included are the resolution as accepted by ASCE's Board of Direction,...
Hartford Coliseum Roof Collapse: Structural Collapse Sequence and Lessons Learned
As with all structural failures, the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum roof has raised many questions about design and analysis procedures. The profession should learn from...
Earth-Filled Slurry Walls Provide Economical Seepage Control
Slurry trench cut-off walls are often used for seepage control after structures requiring excavation are completed, but at a construction site on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway project...
Basics in Failure Analysis of Large Structures
Failure analysis procedures can usually determine the most probalbe cause of a structural failure. Then it is possible to determine why the initial design, materials selection, and fabrication...
The Fly-Over: It Unclogs Urban Traffic in A Hurry
Fly-overs are light-weight, low-cost, prefabricated steel structures that elevate only one or two lanes over a traffic-choked city intersection but dramatically reduce congestion. By removing...
Computerizing Public Works Design
Computers are an easy way to increase engineering design productivity. This is especially important to public works departments who have decreasing budgets and increasing work loads. This...
Space Shuttle
In modifying the decade-old Apollo man-to-the-moon launch facilities at Cape Kennedy, FL, for the forthcoming Space Shuttle mission NASA and contractors made two major innovations: To...
Vail Pass Highway�Respecter of Mountain Ecology
Environmental constraints to a large degree controlled both the design and construction of a 14-mi segment of Interstate Highway 70 through Vail Pass in Colorado and necessitated adoption...
New Telescope has Innovative Structural Design
The new optical telescope at Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, is the third largest in the world, but one of the most economical to build. The savings is the result of using 6 lightweight, small mirrors...
San Antonio Freeway: Social-Impact Landmark
San Antonio's McAllister Freeway, or rather its proposed construction, aroused so much furor as to generate national publicity in the early 1970s. Objections arose because...
TVA's Pumped Storage Plant
TVA's Raccoon Mountain Plant is one of the U.S.'s largest with generating capacity of 1530 MW for 20 hours. The project, nominated for a 1980 OCEA, consists of...
Notched Trusses Give Low-Cost Conversion of Hangars for Jumbo Jets
Physically notching the structural members in a hangar roof solved the problem of moving new DC-10 aircraft into and out of maintenance hangars built for smaller, earlier-generation commercial...
Don't Always Put Dam in Narrowest Part of Valley
Hydraulic factors must be taken into account in dam planning and design, because the best structural design is not always the most economical. When the potential for downstream flood damage...
Part Two: Basics in Failure Analysis of Large Structures
Part two of a article, with part one appearing in May, 1980. Part two begins with microscopic examination which includes the use of scanning and transmission electron microscopes. Covers...
Venezuelan Dock Features Unconventional Design, Quick Set-Up
This structure, designed by Caracas design/construct firm Precomprimido, kills two birds with one stone: a series of huge, hollow concrete cylinders both support the service deck of the...
Five-Story Timber Framed Building
Multi-story glu-lam frames used as a structural system in the Terman Engineering Center, Stanford University. Covers the problem and solution of combining timber framing with reinforced...
Reducing Failures During Earthquakes
There are common building design and structural errors that result in unnecessary building failures during earthquakes. The failures are the result of design errors, changes and economies...
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