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Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of man-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and calculate the stability, strength, rigidity and earthquake-susceptibility of built structures for buildings and nonbuilding structures. The structural designs are integrated with those of other designers such as architects and building services engineer and often supervise the construction of projects by contractors on site. They can also be involved in the design of machinery, medical equipment, and vehicles where structural integrity affects functioning and safety. See glossary of structural engineering.
Structural analysis is the determination of the effects of loads on physical structures and their components. Structures subject to this type of analysis include all that must withstand loads, such as buildings, bridges, aircraft and ships. Structural analysis employs the fields of applied mechanics, materials science and applied mathematics to compute a structure's deformations, internal forces, stresses, support reactions, accelerations, and stability. The results of the analysis are used to verify a structure's fitness for use, often precluding physical tests. Structural analysis is thus a key part of the engineering design of structures.
In structural engineering, a shear wall is a vertical element of a system that is designed to resist in-plane lateral forces, typically wind and seismic loads. In many jurisdictions, the International Building Code and International Residential Code govern the design of shear walls.
Sheet metal is metal formed by an industrial process into thin, flat pieces. Sheet metal is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Countless everyday objects are fabricated from sheet metal. Thicknesses can vary significantly; extremely thin sheets are considered foil or leaf, and pieces thicker than 6 mm (0.25 in) are considered plate steel or "structural steel".
Seismic analysis is a subset of structural analysis and is the calculation of the response of a building structure to earthquakes. It is part of the process of structural design, earthquake engineering or structural assessment and retrofit in regions where earthquakes are prevalent.
Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake engineer aims to construct structures that will not be damaged in minor shaking and will avoid serious damage or collapse in a major earthquake. Earthquake engineering is the scientific field concerned with protecting society, the natural environment, and the man-made environment from earthquakes by limiting the seismic risk to socio-economically acceptable levels. Traditionally, it has been narrowly defined as the study of the behavior of structures and geo-structures subject to seismic loading; it is considered as a subset of structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, applied physics, etc. However, the tremendous costs experienced in recent earthquakes have led to an expansion of its scope to encompass disciplines from the wider field of civil engineering, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, and from the social sciences, especially sociology, political science, economics, and finance.
Formwork is temporary or permanent molds into which concrete or similar materials are poured. In the context of concrete construction, the falsework supports the shuttering molds.
In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is similar to the rolling of dough. Rolling is classified according to the temperature of the metal rolled. If the temperature of the metal is above its recrystallization temperature, then the process is known as hot rolling. If the temperature of the metal is below its recrystallization temperature, the process is known as cold rolling. In terms of usage, hot rolling processes more tonnage than any other manufacturing process, and cold rolling processes the most tonnage out of all cold working processes. Roll stands holding pairs of rolls are grouped together into rolling mills that can quickly process metal, typically steel, into products such as structural steel, bar stock, and rails. Most steel mills have rolling mill divisions that convert the semi-finished casting products into finished products.
This is an alphabetical list of articles pertaining specifically to structural engineering. For a broad overview of engineering, please see List of engineering topics. For biographies please see List of engineers.
In materials science Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) may be characterized by the variation in composition and structure gradually over volume, resulting in corresponding changes in the properties of the material. The materials can be designed for specific function and applications. Various approaches based on the bulk, preform processing, layer processing and melt processing are used to fabricate the functionally graded materials.
A steel plate shear wall (SPSW) consists of steel infill plates bounded by boundary elements.
The history of structural engineering dates back to at least 2700 BC when the step pyramid for Pharaoh Djoser was built by Imhotep, the first architect in history known by name. Pyramids were the most common major structures built by ancient civilizations because it is a structural form which is inherently stable and can be almost infinitely scaled.
The finite element method (FEM) is a widely used method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat transfer, fluid flow, mass transport, and electromagnetic potential.
Cold-formed steel (CFS) is the common term for steel products shaped by cold-working processes carried out near room temperature, such as rolling, pressing, stamping, bending, etc. Stock bars and sheets of cold-rolled steel (CRS) are commonly used in all areas of manufacturing. The terms are opposed to hot-formed steel and hot-rolled steel.
In the Eurocode series of European standards (EN) related to construction, Eurocode 3: Design of steel structures describes how to design of steel structures, using the limit state design philosophy.
The PLPAK developers, BE4E, describe it as "The PLPAK is special purpose software package for structural analysis of building slabs and foundations based on the Boundary Element Method". The PLPAK uses the shear-deformable plate bending theory according to Reissner.
SmartDO is a multidisciplinary design optimization software, based on the Direct Global Search technology developed and marketed by FEA-Opt Technology. SmartDO specialized in the CAE-Based optimization, such as CAE, FEA, CAD, CFD and automatic control, with application on various physics phenomena. It is both GUI and scripting driven, allowed to be integrated with almost any kind of CAD/CAE and in-house codes.
Lumped damage mechanics or LDM is a branch of structural mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of frame structures. It is based on continuum damage mechanics and fracture mechanics. It combines the ideas of these theories with the concept of plastic hinge LDM can be defined as the fracture mechanics of complex structural systems. In the models of LDM, cracking or local buckling as well as plasticity are lumped at the inelastic hinges. As in continuum damage mechanics, LDM uses state variables to represent the effects of damage on the remaining stiffness and strength of the frame structure. In reinforced concrete structures, the damage state variable quantifies the crack density in the plastic hinge zone; in unreinforced concrete components and steel beams, it is a dimensionless measure of the crack surface; in tubular steel elements, the damage variable measures the degree of local buckling The LDM evolution laws can be derived from continuum damage mechanics or fracture mechanics. In the latter case, concepts such as the energy release rate or the stress intensity factor of a plastic hinge are introduced. LDM allows for the numerical simulation of the collapse of complex structures with a fraction of the computational cost and human effort of its continuum mechanics counterparts. LDM is also a regularization procedure that eliminates the mesh-dependence phenomenon that is observed in structural analysis with local damage models. In addition, LDM method has been implemented in the finite element analysis of crack propagation of steel beam-to-column connections subjected to ultra-low cycle fatigue.
In structural engineering and mechanical engineering, generalised beam theory (GBT) is a one-dimensional theory used to mathematically model how beams bend and twist under various loads. It is a generalization of classical Euler–Bernoulli beam theory that approximates a beam as an assembly of thin-walled plates that are constrained to deform as a linear combination of specified deformation modes.
This glossary of structural engineering terms pertains specifically to structural engineering and its sub-disciplines. Please see glossary of engineering for a broad overview of the major concepts of engineering.
References
- Cheung, Y.K. “Finite strip method in structural analysis”, Pergamon Press, 1976.
- "Developments in Tall Buildings 1983". ISBN 0-87933-048-1. Pages 571 - 572.
- Cheung, Y.K. and Tham, L.G. “Finite strip method”, CRC Press, 1998.
- Schafer, B.W., Ádány, S. “Buckling analysis of cold-formed steel members using CUFSM: conventional and constrained finite strip methods.” Eighteenth International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures, Orlando, FL. October 2006. (pdf)
