Walled In (Available in Geo-Environmental Special Issue only)
For more than 50 years manufacturing plants adjacent to the northeast bank of a midwestern creek produced asbestos-reinforced construction materials. When manufacturing at the plants ceased...
Keeping It Together
A new framing system for precast concrete columns and beams will allow tall buildings to withstand large earthquakes without damage to the structural integrity of the building. By using...
Box Girder Balancing Act
On November 18, 1999, cranes lowered into place the last of 202 precast concrete segments that form the main span of the new Sagadahoc Bridge, a $46.6 million crossing that boasts the...
Sum of the Parts
As with all of the bay bridges that serve as life lines to the San Francisco peninsula, the 32-year-old San Mateo Bridge needs strengthening to withstand a maximum credible earthquake...
Branching Out (Available in Structural Engineering Special Issue only)
The Cologne/Bonn Airport in Germany is currently undergoing its biggest construction project to date: a $200 million, five-story addition. Close and productive collaboration between the...
New Bern Bypass
To alleviate congestion and offer tourists easier access to their destinations, the North Carolina Department of Transportation decided to reroute U.S. Route 17 out of the historic town...
High-Performance Hybrid
The Nebraska Department of Roads is taking advantage of the new high-performance steel (HPS) to develop a modular, two-girder bridge that will employ standardized hybrid HPS components,...
Suspension Solution
The new bridge across the Carquinez Strait near San Francisco, California, will upgrade an important transportation link across the Sacramento River. This new bridge, which renders the...
Toronto's Tunnel Solution (Available in the Geoenvironmental Special Section only)
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), one of the largest public transportation systems in North America, carries more than 1,000,000 commuters a day. The TTC's tunnels had...
Saving the Williamsburg Bridge
The Williamsburg Bridge, which has connected Brooklyn to Manhattan for more than 97 years, is midway through an ambitious 14-year, $800-million reconstruction that will save the venerable...
Rapid Expansion
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is undertaking an ambitious light-rail expansion program. It already operates a 20 mi (32 km) light-rail starter system in the city of Dallas. Under construction...
Safeguarding Los Alamos
A forest fire that burned 48,000 ac (19,500 ha) around the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, in May 2000, created another problem for one of the nation's most...
Blocking the Tide
The city of Venice is in peril as a result of increased tidal flooding, and a proposed system of movable gates offers the greatest promise of safeguarding the city's future....
Quality Check
Composite materials, also known as fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs), have traditionally been reserved for aerospace engineering applications because of their high cost. FRPs'...
Golden Gate Update
A comprehensive seismic retrofit is under way to ensure that San Francisco's 2.74-km-long Golden Gate Bridge will remain in operation even after a maximum credible earthquake...
Evaluation of KeySystem I Retaining Wall
Prepared by the Highway Innovative Technology Evaluation Center (HITEC), a CERF Innovation Center. This report describes an evaluation to determine...
Emerging Materials for Civil Infrastructure
State of the Art
Prepared by the Emerging Materials Committee of the Materials Division of ASCE. This report presents a review of the state of the art on emerging materials...
In Plain View
(Available only in Special Structural Issue) A structural engineer's work is typically hidden beneath layers of concrete and plaster, but the Pittsburgh Civic Center in the...
Foundation Design for the Elevated Station
The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is located at an elevation of 2,850 m on the 3,200 m thick polar plateau, a field of ice and snow that is moving toward the ocean at a rate of 10...
Battling Concrete Corrosion
For decades engineers have fought concrete corrosion, but few methods have offered a long-term solution�until now. Electrochemical techniques such as electrochemical chloride extraction...
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