Bare Bones Buildings
A new approach to fire engineering opens possibilities of designing buildings in which the structural skeleton is part of the architectural statement. Fire and corrosion requirements used...
Parking Lot Corrosion Cure
The $3 million structural repair and restoration of a large post-tensioned parking structure required engineers to replace 2,400 tendons while keeping the parking garage in service. After...
Alluring Approach
A new bridge over the White River in Columbus, Ind., is a unique, architecturally appealing cable-stay, concrete-and-steel structure. The bridge satisfies municipal officials'...
Portland's Light Rail Goes Underground
A 29-km extension of Portland's first modern light rail system nears completion. The extension includes a 4.6 km twin-tunnel section and the deepest transit station in North...
Hawaii's Interbase Interstate
Connecting two major military installations, Hawaii's third Interstate highway (H-3) is the largest ($1 billion) HDOT project to date as well as the longest in time (planning...
The Northridge Fractures: Are We Learning the Right Lessons?
After the Northridge earthquake in January 1994, engineers found problems with special moment-resisting frames. There were multiple facture modes, and typical damage involved primary crack...
Guidelines for Evaluating Aging Penstocks
Lessons From Kobe
On Jan. 17, Kobe, Japan became the first post-World War II, heavily populated, industrialized area to bear the full brunt of a high-magnitude earthquake. Engineers hope the resulting destruction...
Northridge Postscript: Lesson on Steel Connections
Immediately after the Northridge earthquake in January 1994, the general concensus was that steel-framed buildings performed extremely well. Later, inspectors were surprised to find weld...
In the Wet
The concept of using large diameter vertical cylinder piles of steel and concrete is not new. Vertical cylinders constructed in pneumatic caissons go back at least 70 years. Steel cylinders...
NDE for Steel Bridges
Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is the only way to detect fatigue cracks hidden by the paint on steel bridges, and FHWA-sponsored research into the problem has been given highest priority....
Composite Sketch
Composite materials from the aerospace and military sectors are showing promise in highway, bridge and transportation applications. Some of the current and potential applications of composites...
Wood Working
Engineers may be more accustomed to working with concrete and steel, but for certain projects aesthetics, cost or other considerations may make wood the preferred choice. According to...
Engineering a Landslide
A slope failure in northwest Alabama has been stabilized using a system of grouted INSERT piles to provide load transfer across the failure surface of the slide. This system, referred...
Advances in Underground Pipeline Engineering II
The first international conference on Advances in Underground Pipeline Engineering was held in 1985. Some 50 authors and over 300 delegates from 20 countries took part in the presentations...
Designing for Drama
Near the Passaic River in Newark, N.J., not far from the famous Iron Bound restaurant district and Newark's Penn Station, construction crews swarm around the steel skeleton...
More Parking Above
Vertical expansion of six (6) new floors of parking garage on top of four (4) floors of existing structure that was built over three decades ago, adding 155,000 square foot of new structure....
Rock Steady
Heavily damaged during the Loma Prieta earthquake, Oakland City Hall had to be repaired and retrofitted. Now Oakland boasts the tallest seismically isolated building in the world. The...
Sounding Out Scour
As engineers are aware, detection of bridge scour is the best protection. A method for monitoring scour during low, normal or high water flows would also help alleviate some of the ambiguity...
Checking Concrete Growth
When the Tennessee Valley Authority built its dams in the 1930s, instrumentation installed in the massive concrete detected a defect that would later cause major problems: concrete growth...
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