Prepared by the Technical Committee on Performance of Structures during Construction of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. This report presents the current design practiceØfor diaphragm walls, with an emphasis on the most effective techniques. It provides an overview of various approaches to diaphragm wall design and presents several successful techniques used in Boston's Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel (CA/T) Project, a massive civil engineering effort thatØemployed more than three million square feet of diaphragm walls. This report focuses attention on the importance of techniques that take soil-structure interactions into consideration.
This is a state-of-the-art report prepared by RILEM Technical Committee 116-PCD and is an authoritative, international review of the subject and is an essential reference source for engineers and technologists. Performance Criteria for Concrete Durability explains key aspects of concrete durability, and the relationships between transport mechanisms and concrete durability characteristics. It reviews test methods for measuring permeability in the laboratory and on site, and discusses the many factors which influence the durability of concrete to carbonation, chlorides, abrasion etc.
Public facilities are valuable assets that can provide decades of high quality of service if they are effectively utilized. Despite effective planning, design, and management, sometimes users or owners change and have requirements different from those that the facility was initially intended to fulfill. In addition, the technologies sometimes change, making facilities obsolete before they have worn out or otherwise failed. This book explores the meaning of obsolescence as the term applies to buildings. It discusses the functional, economic, technological, social, legal, political, and cultural factors that can influence when obsolescence will occur and considers what design professional and building owners and users can do to delay and minimize the costs of obsolescence. The analyses apply to all buildings, but public facilities are given added attention because of their special management problems.
The nation's physical infrastructure facilitates movement of people and goods; provides safe water; provides energy when and where needed; removes wastes; enables rapid communications; and generally supports our economy and quality of life. Developing a framework for guiding attempts at measuring the performance of infrastructure systems and grappling with the concept of defining good performance are the major themes of this book. Focusing on urban regions, within a context of national policy, the volume provides the basis for further in-depth analysis and application at the local, regional, state, and national levels.
Prepared by the Technical Committee on Performance of Structures during Construction of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE. This report presents the current design practiceØfor diaphragm walls, with an emphasis on the most effective techniques. It provides an overview of various approaches to diaphragm wall design and presents several successful techniques used in Boston's Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel (CA/T) Project, a massive civil engineering effort thatØemployed more than three million square feet of diaphragm walls. This report focuses attention on the importance of techniques that take soil-structure interactions into consideration.
The Blast Mitigation for Structures Program (BMSP) is a research and development activity conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to improve the performance of buildings that are targets of terrorist attack. The primary goal of the BMSP is to reduce loss of life and injuries to the occupants of these buildings through the development of innovative techniques for new structures and retrofitting existing facilities. The committee's findings and recommendations are contained in this initial assessment report.
Public facilities are valuable assets that can provide decades of high quality of service if they are effectively utilized. Despite effective planning, design, and management, sometimes users or owners change and have requirements different from those that the facility was initially intended to fulfill. In addition, the technologies sometimes change, making facilities obsolete before they have worn out or otherwise failed. This book explores the meaning of obsolescence as the term applies to buildings. It discusses the functional, economic, technological, social, legal, political, and cultural factors that can influence when obsolescence will occur and considers what design professional and building owners and users can do to delay and minimize the costs of obsolescence. The analyses apply to all buildings, but public facilities are given added attention because of their special management problems.
Hurricane Elena, following an erratic and difficult-to-forecast course along an unusually large section of the Gulf Coast, posed special problems from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Sarasota, Florida, well before it came ashore on September 2, 1985. Considerable wind damage occurred in this area to structures that were ostensibly designed to resist such extreme wind conditions. Because similar design conditions and building control procedures exist along other U.S. hurricane-prone coasts, the conclusions drawn in this detailed book catalog the structural damage caused by the hurricane and emergency response actions, establish the wind conditions of the storm, review in-depth the building control process used in the area, and conduct necessary structural and wind tunnel tests relevant to a large number of communities along the coastal areas.
The nation's physical infrastructure facilitates movement of people and goods; provides safe water; provides energy when and where needed; removes wastes; enables rapid communications; and generally supports our economy and quality of life. Developing a framework for guiding attempts at measuring the performance of infrastructure systems and grappling with the concept of defining good performance are the major themes of this book. Focusing on urban regions, within a context of national policy, the volume provides the basis for further in-depth analysis and application at the local, regional, state, and national levels.
This book assesses wind engineering research studies in the past two decades to identify an interdisciplinary research agenda and delineate an action plan for evaluation of critical wind engineering efforts. It promotes the interdisciplinary approach to achieve collaborative research, assesses the feasibility of formalizing undergraduate wind engineering curricula, and assesses international wind engineering research activities and transfer approaches for U.S. applications.
The major objective of this book was to identify issues related to the introduction of new materials and the effects that advanced materials will have on the durability and technical risk of future civil aircraft throughout their service life. The committee investigated the new materials and structural concepts that are likely to be incorporated into next generation commercial aircraft and the factors influencing application decisions. Based on these predictions, the committee attempted to identify the design, characterization, monitoring, and maintenance issues that are critical for the introduction of advanced materials and structural concepts into future aircraft.
The selection of the proper materials for a structural component is a critical activity that is governed by many, often conflicting factors. Incorporating materials expert systems into CAD/CAM operations could assist designers by suggesting potential manufacturing processes for particular products to facilitate concurrent engineering, recommending various materials for a specific part based on a given set of characteristics, or proposing possible modifications of a design if suitable materials for a particular part do not exist. This book reviews the structural design process, determines the elements, and capabilities required for a materials selection expert system to assist design engineers, and recommends the areas of expert system and materials modeling research and development required to devise a materials-specific design system.
Construction is a multibillion dollar industry in the United States, yet building research is highly fragmented. This new book is a complete compilation of building research institutions. It contains profiles of the institutions and gives their addresses and phone numbers, the mission and focus of their research, their distinctive attributes, and their publications. A comprehensive index identifies all institutions conducting research on specific topics.
The Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco area on October 17, 1989, causing 63 deaths and $10 billion worth of damage. This book reviews existing research on the Loma Prieta quake and draws from it practical lessons that could be applied to other earthquake-prone areas of the country. The volume contains seven keynote papers presented at a symposium on the earthquake and includes an overview written by the committee offering recommendations to improve seismic safety and earthquake awareness in parts of the country susceptible to earthquakes.
This book provides a brief overview of worldwide terrorist activity and reviews technologies and methods for designing blast resistant buildings. These techniques, primarily developed by the military, have applicability and relevance to the design of civilian structures. The volume recommends that a program of applied research and technology transfer be undertaken to hasten the availability and utility of these techniques to the civilian building community.
Many coastal communities have built structures at their beaches and added quantities of sand in contoured designs to combat erosion. Are such beach nourishment projects technically and economically sound? Or are they nothing more than building sand castles, as critics claim? Beach Nourishment and Protection provides a sound technical basis for decisionmaking, with recommendations regarding the utility of beach nourishment, the appropriate role of federal agencies, responsibility for cost, design methodology, and other issues. This volume Examines the economic and social role of beaches, the history of beach nourishment projects, and management strategies for shore protection. Discusses the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies, with a close-up look at the federal flood insurance program. Explores the state of the art in project design and prediction of outcomes, including the controversy over the use of traditional and nontraditional shore protection devices. Addresses what is known about the environmental impacts of beach nourishment. Identifies what outcomes should be targeted for continued monitoring by project officials. Beach Nourishment and Protection provides insight into the technical, economic, environmental, and policy implications of beach nourishment and protection, with examples and suggested research directions.
Many coastal communities have built structures at their beaches and added quantities of sand in contoured designs to combat erosion. Are such beach nourishment projects technically and economically sound? Or are they nothing more than building sand castles, as critics claim? Beach Nourishment and Protection provides a sound technical basis for decision-making, with recommendations regarding the utility of beach nourishment, the appropriate role of federal agencies, responsibility for cost, design methodology, and other issues. This volume: Examines the economic and social role of beaches, the history of beach nourishment projects, and management strategies for shore protection. Discusses the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies, with a close-up look at the federal flood insurance program. Explores the state of the art in project design and prediction of outcomes, including the controversy over the use of traditional and nontraditional shore protection devices. Addresses what is known about the environmental impacts of beach nourishment. Identifies what outcomes should be targeted for continued monitoring by project officials. Beach Nourishment and Protection provides insight into the technical, economic, environmental, and policy implications of beach nourishment and protection, with examples and suggested research directions.
The federal government has invested more than $300 billion in 500,000 buildings and other facilities worldwide to support the provision of government services. Evidence is mounting that the physical condition, functionality, and quality of federal facilities are deteriorating. Stewardship of Federal Facilities identifies factors and processes contributing to this deterioration and recommends a framework of methods, practices, and strategies to foster accountability for the stewardship of federal facilities and to allocate resources for their maintenance and repair.
In 1993, at Tooele Army Depot, Utah, the Army completed construction of the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF), the first complete facility for destruction of lethal unitary chemical agents and munitions to be built in the continental United States. The TOCDF will employ the Army's baseline incineration system to destroy the depot's increment of the nation's aging unitary chemical stockpile. This book assesses Army changes and improvements to the TOCDF in response to recommendations contained in earlier reports of the committee. It assesses aspects of the facility's readiness for safe agent handling and destruction operations, its agent monitoring system, and its site specific risk assessment.
The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has proposed that a large-scale wind test facility (LSWTF) be constructed to study, in full-scale, the behavior of low-rise structures under simulated extreme wind conditions. To determine the need for, and potential benefits of, such a facility, the Idaho Operations Office of the DOE requested that the National Research Council (NRC) perform an independent assessment of the role and potential value of an LSWTF in the overall context of wind engineering research. The NRC established the Committee to Review the Need for a Large-scale Test Facility for Research on the Effects of Extreme Winds on Structures, under the auspices of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment, to perform this assessment. This report conveys the results of the committee's deliberations as well as its findings and recommendations.
The passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) by Congress and subsequent modifications of international maritime regulations resulted in a far-reaching change in the design of tank vessels. Double-hull rather than single-hull tankers are now the industry standard, and nearly all ships in the world maritime oil transportation fleet are expected to have double hulls by about 2020. This book assesses the impact of the double hull and related provisions of OPA 90 on ship safety, protection of the marine environment, and the economic viability and operational makeup of the maritime oil transportation industry. The influence of international conventions on tank vessel design and operation is addressed. Owners and operators of domestic and international tank vessel fleets, shipyard operators, marine architects, classification societies, environmentalists, and state and federal regulators will find this book useful.
Unified life-cycle engineering (ULCE), or concurrent engineering, is a design engineering environment in which computer-aided design technology is used to assess and improve the quality of a productâ€"not only during the active design phases but throughout its entire life cycle. This is achieved by integrating and optimizing the design attributes for producibility and supportability as well as for performance, operability, cost, and schedule. This book addresses ULCE approaches to design, manufacture, and application of structural componentsâ€"especially for advanced military systems. Conclusions and recommendations to support the development of an effective ULCE design engineering environment are presented.
On November 13, 1985, catastrophic mudflows swept down the slopes of the erupting Nevado del Ruiz volcano, destroying structures in their paths. Various estimates of deaths ranged as high as 24,000 residents. Though the nature and extent of risk posed by the mudflows to local communities were well documented before the event and extensive efforts had been made to communicate this information to those at risk, the affected communities were caught largely unaware. This volume analyzes the disaster's many aspects: the extent, constitution, and behavior of the mudflows; the nature of damage to structures; the status of the area's disaster warning system; and the extent of the area's disaster preparedness, emergency response actions, and disaster relief effortsâ€"both at the time of the disaster and in the first few months following the event.
This volume considers engineering risk analysis applications to the field of building safety. Building codes and design criteria used by architects and engineersâ€"standards of good practice defined by industry consensusâ€"have made great strides in bringing the dangers of facilities under control, but the range of hazards (e.g., fire, indoor air pollutants, electrical malfunctions) is broad. Risk analysis offers improved overall safety of new and existing facilities without imposing unacceptable costs. Broad application of risk analysis will help facility professionals, policymakers, and facility users and owners to understand the risks, to determine what levels of risk are socially and economically tolerable, and to manage risk more effectively.
Prepared at the request of NASA, Aeronautical Technologies for the Twenty-First Century presents steps to help prevent the erosion of U.S. dominance in the global aeronautics market. The book recommends the immediate expansion of research on advanced aircraft that travel at subsonic speeds and research on designs that will meet expected future demands for supersonic and short-haul aircraft, including helicopters, commuter aircraft, "tiltrotor," and other advanced vehicle designs. These recommendations are intended to address the needs of improved aircraft performance, greater capacity to handle passengers and cargo, lower cost and increased convenience of air travel, greater aircraft and air traffic management system safety, and reduced environmental impacts.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.