g'day i'm going to give you some of the
best advice i have to help progress your
career faster as a structural engineer
if you stick around to the end there'll
be a piece of advice that you
probably like you've never heard of that
will help progress your career faster
than anything else you can do
i'm brendan your structural engineer and
if you and if you're
interested in helping progress your
career faster as a structural engineer
improve your design skills or just
interested about engineering don't
forget to subscribe
now let's get into it when you look at
engineering you've got to realize it's
really an art of imprecision
and we're dealing with variables
throughout the whole life cycle of a
structure
whether that be through the construction
methodologies or the materials
this is perfectly summed up by a quote
by dr a.r dykes
where he wrote engineering is the art of
modelling materials we do not wholly
understand
into shapes we cannot precisely analyse
as to withstand forces we cannot
properly assess in such a way that the
public has no reason to suspect
the extent of our ignorance this
probably sums up what we're doing
as you can see we have materials such as
concrete that is variable over time and
non-linear behavior and we're also on a
construction site which
which is not a manufacturing line so
things go wrong
everything we do is an estimate even the
loads that we see on the structure
is an approximation to what we see so
when you're just starting out in the
structural engineering field you've just
graduated you think you know everything
you need to know to be a good structural
engineer
however, you'll be sadly mistaken as
you'll soon find out when you're moving
into the field
you barely know anything from where
you've graduated
you've really taught just a little bit
how to scratch the surface how to design
structures and how to put them together
they haven't really told you how to
build that structure or how the
structure gets built or even how to
display that to someone to be able to
build that
when you're first starting out there
will be constant learning that you need
to do you have to make time to study
and this is not just the study career
this is throughout your whole career
and through your whole life cycle as
being a structural engineer as the more
the more you learn the more you realize
you don't understand about the
engineering there's always something to
learn to improve your skills so one
thing i like to do or one thing that i'm
really passionate about
is that the day i stop learning is the
day i retire
when you're studying design i like
approaching a big data collection
process to make sure i have everything i
need to be able to design that thing
effectively at the start now we need to
collect a lot of data like plans
codes and even client briefs to ensure
that you have all the information you
need to design it effectively now when
you have that data it's
always worth writing it down into a
methodological statement because then
you have a logical order about how
you're going to approach that design and
and when someone else picks up that
design they can have a look exactly what
you've done
and how you approach that so it makes it
easier for them to pick up and check
to ensure that you've done it correctly
when you're undertaking that design
you would also find out that hand
computations and
3d models go hand in hand as you need
some way to assess whether the model you
produced is accurate or not
so when i'm starting a complex design
i'll start off with a hand assumption to
see
where i'm going then i'll build a simple
2d stick frame
and it will get more and more complex
into a 2d frame into a 3d frame
to ensure that the model is behaving as
expected if there is
unknown discrepancies between the two
things then you drill down you can see
what what precisely is wrong maybe your
hand compound or assumptions were wrong
or maybe the model you modeled you've
made wrong assumptions with computers
it's garbage and garbage out when you're
reviewing your models
look for patterns it's really your best
friend as you'll quickly spot errors
within your design
or even efficiencies that you can
potentially achieve elsewhere so when
you're looking for a design
if you see it and breaking that pattern
why is it broken maybe there's some
reason maybe the load's reduced or
there's some other
causes that reduce that if there's not
you have to drill down and work out why
that why that is different
maybe maybe the design is incorrect or
maybe maybe you've over designed other
areas as well so look for patterns in
your design to be a quick way to assess
whether you've got an accurate design
there or not
if the patterns are changing why are
they changing there may be some reason
if not potentially there's an area that
you need to fix when you're just
starting out in engineering you'll be
doing tons of load rundowns
so it's really important to understand
tribute areas and shear throw
what i've brought up here is a plan it's
a series of columns set out
evenly spaced all around it and up in
the top
corner there's number one so what does
that one represent
that one represents that if we were just
to scale off the area around that column
that that would roughly equal to one
times
what the actual load is on that column
now as you can see
across the whole grid every other column
doesn't have a number on it
and this isn't going to be an example
i'm going to use to explain what she
flew is and how she throw works
so what i want you to do is to think
about it
what do you think if you were to change
all the other columns around the outside
what would they be
so for example if we're going to look on
the outside would that outer edge be 0.5
because if we dividing the area evenly
around it it is 0.5
or is or is it a different number now if
you have a think about this and
scale off all the rest of them random to
see what you think they are
i'll give you five seconds to think
about it before revealing the answers
one two three
four five now as you can see
that first internal column is 15 percent higher
than the other ones around it now this
is really because of the action of shear
throw
so what is happening that that first
intron column is dragging the load back
to it
because of the discontinuity being a
bay
the load is dragged back to that
internal column because there's no
load beyond the end of the slam to help
balance out that reaction
that's why that load has increased so
this is something just to watch out for
that when you are doing these load
rundowns
that you are increasing that first
internal bay by roughly about 15 percent
i wouldn't worry too much about the
external side because because it is
conservative but if you don't if you
don't
increase that first internal column
you've underpredicted what the actual
load is
another good thing about seeing how
shear throat works is that you can see
how structures behave under load
essentially load travels to the stiffest
path first and it flows through the
structure from top to bottom
when you're assessing those vertical
invasive loads it's also worth
considering an upper and lower bound
case
as sometimes the structures may behave
slightly differently than you'd expect
in the short term it may behave one way
especially concrete with creep factors
and in the long term
it may be a completely different
behavior so assessing both those will
ensure that you've covered
both bounds of that design is always
important the stability of the structure
is important to any structural design
now how do you know if you've got a
stable structure
well think back when you're a kid you
had a cardboard box
how did you make that box stable if you
tried to stand it up and didn't have the
back ends
closed up it would fall over so what
does that teach us about
about stability you need minimum three
points
to make it stable so as you can see you
need the two sides in the back
to make that structure stable if we open
it it falls over
we pull it up close it up so we can
apply this to our structural designs as
well
so whenever you're assessing the where
you've got the stability through your
structure ensure that you have
three directions of stability within
your within that structure
now stability can be achieved through a
number of ways on the smaller buildings
you can have
sway frames as you're going up in size
you start to have cross bracing and
shear walls
and potentially cores and outriggers
there's a big broad range of stability
arms you can have in a structure
also when you design that stability you
need to make sure they're able to get to
the extra stability elements within your
building
so there'll be forces within slabs and
floor structures that need to be tran
be transferred to where your stability
elements are these are called diaphragm
forces and you have to track them
through your structure
another major point in structural design
is robustness and disposition collapse
now what does that mean it means that mean
structure can have minor damage and have
that
damage extend beyond a disproportional
location
from where it was received for example
you can you cannot leave you
lose one column and lose every floor
above it this is most evident
in a building back in the 60s called
ronan point where they had a small
explosion at the bottom
then every floor above it fell down and
how do you get around this is
really probably in detail and connection
design it's mostly in the detailing of
the buildings which is ensuring that
you've got all your connections and
continuity through your whole structure
now i am going to give my
number one tip to help you progress your
career faster
as a structural engineer communication is by
far the number one thing you can do to
help improve your skills and this is
really where you should be spending most
of your time especially if you're
studying
now when you think about communication
everything we do is some form of
communication whether we're talking on
the phone to a client whether we produce
the drawings we need to have those
drawings very clear so that everyone can
understand and build those
or even in meetings emails or structural
advice
we need to make sure that that device is
tailored for the people it's going for
if you've got some of the best engineers
in the world but they can't impart the
advice that they know
it's really useless as no one can
actually apply the knowledge that
they've had
so you should spend a lot of time on
communication i'll probably do a future
video about
communicating as a structural engineer
there's also some good books i'll link
below that
you may be interested in and picking up
at some point
but communication is by far the number
one thing you can do to help impress
your career as a structural engineer
now anyway thanks for watching if you
did like this video
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points
points of view or advice that you'd like
to give engineers don't forget to
comment below
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like me to cover in future videos
also put them in the below section i'll
get back to them as short as quickly as
possible i'm always up for a
conversation
anyway thanks for watching i look
forward to seeing you in the next video
see you