Influence Line Resources

[Perception]

Hello everyone,

I am studying for the vertical breadth portion of the S.E. exam, and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with influence lines.

I’m studying using SERM and understand the concepts, but don’t see any resources for influence lines that are available in the various code books we’ll get access to. There’s a few cases for max shear and moment due to concentrated loads in the steel manual, but nothing if you run across something nasty like a multi-span beams with internal hinges.

Is there something in AASHTO or another common code book that helps with the construction of influence lines? I’m a building person so I’m not super familiar with AASHTO. Thanks.

Sidebar: Even though it’s a computer based exam, it’s asinine to not be able to bring your own reference material. What possible usefulness is there in me reading a paragraph of text to get a snow load formula out of ASCE 7-16, or having to go through who knows how many pages to deal with the poor organization of ACI 318?

 

[271828]

Get a basic Structural Analysis textbook. It should have a chapter of ILs for statically determinate structures. Hibbeler is good. Leet is also. There are many others.

Use the Muller-Breslau Principle. After you get the hang of it, you should be able to draw the IL for almost any beam in no time.

 

[CuriousBearcat]

I recommend Hibbeler too - his book got me interested in this field and to become a structural engineer.

-Just a curious engineer

 

[TLHS]

Oh man, I just looked at how references work for these now. So you don't get to bring your own copies of the references *and* the ones they give you only open one chapter at a time. Using ASCE-7 one chapter at a time is awful. Not only do you have to flip between chapters and do all the navigation, but you can't do a "find" command across the whole thing. You need to look in like three to five different chapters if you want to do seismic design.

This is worse than handing your physical copies of the standards without any bookmarks or tabs in them.

Man, this would have been doubly awful before ACI reorganized.

 

[lexpatrie]

This may not be a good video - (I haven't watched it), but Muller Breslau for Influence lines was kind of my favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj5SVD0Rmy0

Regards,
Brian