STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
PHOTO BY: MURRAY
Is the best bridge building material steel or concrete? Why is there steel inside many concrete walls? How do you attached two steel beams together?
How are large rooms designed and built without any pillars inside?
DIGGING DEEPER: STRUCTURAL
There are many different parts to structures, these are called structural elements. In general, columns hold up beams, trusses, and arches. These four elements are held together by connections. A structural engineer must not only understand each of these elements, but also how they work together.
PHOTO BY: MID SOUTH
PHOTO BY: MID SOUTH
PHOTO BY: BRAHAM
PHOTO BY: OLSSON
What do we make these columns, beams, trusses, arches, and connections? We can use steel, concrete, timber, or masonry. More commonly, we use multiple different materials combined together in order to optimize the benefits of each type of material.
Structural engineers don’t just focus on buildings, they also design, study, and optimize materials (material science), design bridges, analyze the impact of earthquakes on all infrastructure, and build wind turbines and other electric infrastructure.
PHOTO BY: CRAFTON TULL
PHOTO BY: GARVER
Structural engineers also use computer to simulate what is happening in the real world. Using various software, we can input material properties and elements, and we can estimate how the elements will behave when loads are applied.
PHOTO BY: MID SOUTH
PHOTO BY: BRAHAM
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