Structural Engineering Fun Facts
When trying to reduce beam deflection, increasing this property is often more effective than adding large amounts of steel.
What is beam depth?
This New York City suspension bridge opened in 1883 and was one of the first steel-wire suspension bridges.
What is the Brooklyn Bridge?
ACI 318 requires this much clear cover for concrete cast directly against earth.
What is 3 inches?
This design methodology compares factored loads to reduced nominal strength and is used by ACI 318, AISC 360, and modern bridge specifications.
What is LRFD (Load and Resistance Factor Design)?
This type of deep foundation transfers load to bearing strata primarily through friction along its embedded surface, as opposed to relying mainly on end bearing at its tip.
What is a friction pile?
This bridge is about 7 feet longer on hot days than on cold days.
What is the Golden Gate Bridge?
This Roman structure, completed nearly 2,000 years ago, remains the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.
What is the Pantheon?
A shear failure in a slab around a column is commonly called this.
What is Punching Shear?
Which ASCE standard is commonly used to determine design loads on structures?
What is ASCE 7?
This structural system relies on the flexural stiffness of columns and beams, combined with moment-resisting connections, to resist lateral loads without the use of diagonal braces or shear walls.
What is a moment-resisting frame (MRF)?
A single cubic yard of normal-weight concrete weighs over this many tons.
What are 2 tons?
Before structural steel became dominant, many long-span 19th-century bridges were built primarily from this metal.
What is cast iron?
In reinforced concrete design per ACI 318, the uniform Whitney rectangular stress block uses a maximum concrete compressive stress equal to this value times f'c.
What is 0.85(f'c)?
According to ASCE 7-22, identify each load symbol: Ak, Di, Fa, Heb, and Hw
Ak = Load from extraordinary event; Di = weight of ice; Fa = Flood load; Heb = lateral earth pressure; Hw = Load due to ground water pressure in soil
This method for analyzing indeterminate beams and frames treats redundant reactions as unknowns, using compatibility equations based on deflections calculated via virtual work or other techniques.
What is the force method (method of consistent deformations)?
The world's tallest bridge pier, located on France's Millau Viaduct, stands this many feet tall (ft).
What is 804 feet?
This dam's failure in 1976 due to foundation issues caused one of the largest civil engineering disasters in U.S. history.
What is the Teton Dam?
ACI permits reduction of the equivalent rectangular compression stress block depth by using this parameter, which decreases as concrete strength increases.
What is β₁?
In ASCE 7, this load includes forces resulting from contraction, expansion, creep, shrinkage, and differential settlement.
What is load T (self-straining forces and effects)?
This term describes a prestressed concrete construction method where tendons are stressed and anchored against hardened concrete, with the tendon housed in a duct that may later be grouted.
What is post-tensioning?
The Burj Khalifa contains enough concrete by weight to equal roughly this many elephants.
What is 100,000 elephants?
Nicknamed "Big John," this was the first steel skyscraper and is often considered the beginning of modern high-rise construction.
What is the Home Insurance Building (Chicago)?
What is the strength reduction factor for each of the following: Brackets and corbels, Torsion, Bearing, plain concrete elements?
Brackets and corbels = 0.75; Torsion = 0.75; Bearing = 0.65; plain concrete elements = 0.60
The "tail" of a welding symbol is commonly used to reference this type of information.
What is the welding process, specification, or other reference information?
This ACI 318 concept describes the additional moment that develops in slender columns due to lateral deflection under axial load, requiring magnification of the design moment when the column's slenderness ratio exceeds a threshold.
What is Moment Magnification (P-Δ Effects) (slenderness effects)?