Mill building construction reference 2

[NS4U]

I’m looking for a reference or book that would contain information about construction details and typical construction information for old (late 1800s/early 1900s) mill buildings. Looking for the typical heavy timber and brick bearing wall structures. Trying to learn more about how they did things back then.

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

"Mill Building Construction", 1901 and "A Treatise on Design and Construction of Mill Buildings", 1911, Chapter 15, both by H. G. Tyrrell have the type information you are looking for.

By the 1890's wood and brick were no longer being used in "modern" mill buildings. They had given way to steel and reinforced concrete. A good reference for these is "The Design of Steel Mill Buildings", Fourth Edition 1921 by Milo Ketchum. The first edition was published in 1903.

All three of the above books are in the public domain and can be downloaded, free.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

http://www.VacuumTubeEra.net

 

[dik]

You may also want to look at AISC Design Guide 7.

Dik

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Great references SRE. I'd add Historical Building Construction: Design, Materials, and Technology.

I think mill buildings and "typical construction" should rarely be in the same sentence. Mill buildings that have been in use for a hundred years have been modified, expanded, renovated, re-purposed, and rebuilt so many times that they tend to be a hodge-podge of construction details in my experience.

That said, the most consistent thing I've seen is masonry. Almost all the brick work in mills followed similar design methodologies and detailing. Lots of corbels and arching action. Thankfully masonry construction hasn't changed much in 100 years. Pretty much just picking up any good historic masonry book should work.

Wood can be all over the place but pretty much all goes back to heavy timber post and beam construction. Most post and beam books out there discussing barns and other historic wood design will cover what you need. Plus a lot of "modern" wood design methodology is still applicable, just don't expect to use NDS design values and get realistic numbers (old, dense wood; really high strength compared to modern fast growth wood). However, you'll often find lots of fun details not usually covered, tie-rod trusses and broken beams spliced back together and so on.

Fireproofing is another area that can be all over the place. Something I learned recently is a lot of old mills used wood decking between floors to provide fire-"proofing" through charring of this wood decking. However many mills still in use (or re-purposed mills) have modified the floors and thus lost any fire-rating the floors had.

Concrete is usually well defined and simple, but be prepared for weird reinforcement methods. Twisted square bar is the most common oddity I have seen, develops better than modern deformed bar.

Steel is nice, as dik pointed out DG7 is a great reference. Rivited construction and lots of fun things that would be way too expensive to make these days. Rarely have I ran into anything really odd with steel in old mills.

If you run into cast-iron, run away.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/

 

[canwesteng]

TME - any reference on where to find design values other than NDS? I ran into something similar a while back and had to tell the client to limit his floor loading to 40 psf.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

TME - any reference on where to find design values other than NDS? I ran into something similar a while back and had to tell the client to limit his floor loading to 40 psf.

This paper is thorough:

http://www.apti.org/clientuploads/pdf/Anthony-Dugan-40-2.pdf

You'll likely want a copy of this book (of internet meme fame):

https://www.amazon.com/Identifying-Wood-Accurate-Results-Simple/dp/0942391047

AWC has a lot of older design documents on their website (many for free):

http://www.awc.org/codes-standards/publications/nds-archives

AWC also is good about responding to questions and have some knowledgeable engineers on staff. If you send them a question they may be able to point you to other historic design documents that I'm not aware of.

I usually start by running a design using assumed local wood species and design with Select Structural or No. 1 Dense values for modern graded lumber from the NDS supplement. This usually gets a good idea of whether it's worth it or not to perform a detailed visual investigation of the timbers and getting accurate grades. I believe there are places you can send samples to and they can visually grade the lumber and determine the species but I've never tried this. In-place load tests to measure deflection can be used to verify calculations empirically.

Historic wood design is covered in a lot of places and on eng-tips so I'd also recommend a google search as a good place to start.

Ian Riley, PE, SE
Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanConcrete/