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...
Entrenchment of Sewage Sludge�a Disposal-Use Alternative
Entrenchment of sewage sludge is an alternative for the disposal and use of sewage sludge. Its advantages include high disposal rate, little odor problem, and no surface runoff. Two methods...
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...
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...
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...
Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Pioneers in Conservation Approach
One way to save fuel costs in sewage treatment plants is to use methane gas produced during sludge digestion as fuel. Cleveland's Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant, however,...
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...
The Fabric Roof
Only six years after the opening of the first fabric-roofed building, fabric structures are being used all over the world in applications undreamed of only a decade ago. The article recounts...
Mount St. Helens Eruption�Impact and Civil Engineering Response
The May 18 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, estimated to have the energy equivalent of a 20 to 50 megaton atom bomb, did tremendous damage. It destroyed an estimated 160...
Top Foreign-Born Civil Engineers Speak Their Minds
Six distinguished civil engineers born and educated abroad discuss their careers and explore: the differences in the civil engineering marketplace and in the public image of the CE here...
Tangshan Rebuilds after Mammoth Earthquake
The City of Tangshan, China was totally devastated in 1976 by a major earthquake. Over 240,000 people were killed in one of history's greatest disasters. The quake had a Richter...
Some Secrets to Building Structures on Expansive Soils
Each year, in the U.S. alone, shrinking or swelling soils inflict over $ 2.3 billion in damages to houses, buildings, roads, pipelines, and other structures. Despite this many engineers...
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