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3DDave -- that's usually the easiest approach, but construction sequences and methods rarely survive 50 years of county records offices.

You're right, it often doesn't get the attention it deserves. And cases like this are tragic. When done properly, it needn't be risky. Shameless plug here for the best practices guide we published last year https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784485361 Absolutely. Planning demolition work...

I got into a major disagreement with some French engineers a few years ago about this. Their position was that because Eurocode prescribes that force needs to be "external", that internal forces like vector component reactions or weight of concrete cannot be used as the "clamping force". It...

i) Calculation of the center of mass and center of rigidity will be an iterative process. You'll take the floorplan and make an intelligent guess, work through your design, then revisit those guesses to see if they are satisfactorily accurate or require adjustment (and repeated design). How many...

Whoever is asking you to perform the review gets to set the qualifications. I doubt your average homeowner or commercial building owner cares. They just want a knowledgeable opinion they can use. I'm CalOES trained for seismic events -- that training touches on process and liability, with some...

Whether or not this is a structural issue will depend on details of the design and reinforcement crossing the cold joint, which we do not yet know. Whether or not this is a contractual issue is a separate question.

Oh, that is unique. It's essentially a warren truss. Where the bottom chord is a pretty distinct flat bar member,the top chord is a pretty distinct member (double channel?) and the diagonals are the two edges of the triangle. The fact that the triangle is solid is a bit of a red herring, except...

You might reference ASCE 37 or the chain link fence manufacturer's institute wind load guide for applicable loading. AASHTO has provisions for concrete sound walls, but your fence sounds less substantial.

Q1: There's a lot of disagreement about the braced length of a cantilever beam. The BS & P360 approach is perhaps the most nuanced of them (and is also shown in the Guide to Stability Design Criteria for Metal Structures (5th) published by SSRC for those practicing with US codes). In many (but...

Whether to combine bending and axial stress will depend whether your transverse loading is external or internal (inertial). In most cases you'll combine it, as often an external load is applied to one flange but resisted/reacted at the opposite flange. There's no need to get into shear failure...

Agreed. As far as references, you'd not do any better than to pick up a copy of Blodgett's Design of Welded Structures.

Absolutely. Kids start swinging, structure deflects. Kids think it's cool and everyone jumps in to see how much they can make it wobble. Moms think it's less cool and complain to the building owner. Or worse, moms contact the local news station for an "investigation" and threaten a lawsuit.

Lifting (jacking) design can be straightforward for certain bridge types (straight alignments, generous pier caps, simple spans) but can quickly become complicated as the bridge becomes more complicated. The engineering company should be handling that side, but it can affect your work as the...

Bulkheads to create a vertical joint in an interrupted beam placement are really a pain for the contractor. As BA points out, the location should be chosen to permit full development of the main beam bars. If you're planning it in advance, diagonal stirrups can be placed at the interface to help...

And I think that's the rub. I work with pretty sophisticated heavy contractors... and even when (as sometimes required by spec) I do list all the expected design values, the best they're going to do is ask their sales guy at the lumber yard. That sales guy likely does not have the...

I can confirm that MIDAS is powerful but atrocious. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I've heard good things about CSI Bridge and Open Bridge. Previously worked with LUSAS which was similarly powerful and more user-friendly than MIDAS. BRASS is an absolute gift when it is applicable, but of course...

centondollar, where the pipe diameter and the wide flange flat dimension are similar (as is common practice and shown in the photo above), the web is pretty firmly restrained by the adjacent flanges, and I would judge that there is some significant flexural restraint present, even in the weak...

The stepped column check is your simpler check. Looking at those nomographs (from Dalal or others) should give a pretty quick indication of how much length each end can be a reduced moment of inertia without compromising much axial buckling capacity. Dalal below, where alpha = A/L and beta = I2/I1

Agreed that the remaining concrete will reduce the flange's tendency to buckle. I think it's fair to increase LTB capacity accordingly. If your web is very slender (late 1960s, early 1970s), note that your (mostly) non-composite girder now may have a very large portion of the web in...

No current code basis. What HD suggests is rational engineering although it may trigger a discussion with a reviewe