Structural parametric design for variant studies in the preliminary design phase

An organized process is necessary to ensure that the building is built on time and within budget. This does not always go well however and four major difficulties can arise. One of the current solutions is performing variant studies. Designing variants is costly however, which limits the amount of analysed variants. The focus is set on improving...

Performance assessment of the Ocean Falls Wave Energy Converter: A solution for electrical power production in the future

There is a growing demand for renewable sources of energy of which wave energy conversion is one. The Ocean Falls is an oscillating water column (OWC) system invented by BAM Infraconsult b.v. This system differs from conventional OWC systems since it includes a connection tube and an adjustable back wall. The OWC system is a resonance system for...

A demountable structural system of multi-story building: Case study of car park building

The growth of world population will be the challenge of the century regarding the carbon footprints. The human activities produce both direct and indirect carbon emission that is contributing to the climate change. The construction industry itself contributes around 30 percent of total carbon emissions in the world. Thus, the challenge is to...

Double-curved precast concrete elements: Research into technical viability of the flexible mould method

The production of precast, concrete elements with complex, double-curved geometry is expensive due to the high costcosts of the necessary moulds and the limited possibilities for mould reuse. Currently, CNC-milled foam moulds are the solution applied mostly in projects, offering good aesthetic performance, but also resulting in waste of material...

Printing a stainless steel bridge: An exploration of structural properties of stainless steel additive manufactures for civil engineering purposes

The potential of additive manufacturing is great: highly complex and efficient structures can be manufactured with hardly any waste material. While high-tech industries such as aviation and medicine have already embraced additive manufacturing, civil engineering is lagging behind. Research on the structural properties of additive manufactures in...

Human-induced vibrations on footbridges: A probability-based approach of the vibration serviceability of footbridges under vertical pedestrian loading

In structural design there is a tendency towards more slender and challenging architectural structures. Footbridges become more slender with an increasing high ratio live load to dead weight. A consequence of this increased slenderness of footbridges in an increased susceptibility to human-induced vibrations. The evaluation of the serviceability...

State on the art of computational tools for conceptual structural design

This paper presents a review of existing research, projects, developments and applications in the domain of design tools for conceptual structural engineering. The availability of these tools and research into software for conceptual structural design stages has shown a number of interesting developments over the last past few years. The purpose...

Feasibility study of Air Traffic Control Towers around the globe: “International research regarding the local influences providing an optimal structural design for air traffic control towers around the globe in an economical perspective”

At this moment the global human wealth is getting to the next level, which means a growing amount of people is able to travel by plane and these growth figures are seen in the latest global annual passenger’s flows. These latest developments demand building new airports and extending the existing airports heavily around the world in the nearby...

Feasibility study on heavy-traffic fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) bascule bridges

The material properties of fibre reinforced polymer composites fundamentally differ from construction steel, and therefore a different approach is required in the design of structures composed of this material. Simple substitution of steel elements by composite counterparts will inevitably result in inefficient structures. When the material’s...

Structural Adhesive Bonded Steel-to-Steel Connections: An Introduction for Structural Engineering

Today, there are only a few types of structural engineering applications where structural adhesives play a role, in contrast to other engineering sectors. The possibilities and difficulties of structural adhesive bonding in structural engineering, especially for steel-to-steel connections, are investigated. Practically all structural adhesives...

Feasibility study on fiber reinforced polymer cylindrical truss bridges for heavy traffic

Considering the recent increase in the use of fiber reinforced polymers in the civil engineering industry in general and in the bridge engineering industry in particular, as well as the recently more and more applied cylindrical truss bridge type, this research focuses on the question whether it is possible to combine fiber reinforced polymers...

StructuralComponents: A software system for conceptual structural design

Conceptual design is the starting point of the design process. The conceptual design stage comprises the formation of several ideas or design concepts to meet the imposed constraints. StructuralComponents is a software application that attempts to provide the designing engineer with a suitable set of tools for this stage. It facilitates the...

NetworkedDesign: Next generation infrastructure for computational design

During the design and engineering process of buildings and structures an enormous amount of data and information is produced. Logic, knowledge and experience is employed during this process by the designers and engineers to finally come to the design result. Because this information can not be fully recorded by software, a huge amount of...

Safety Concepts in Structural Glass Engineering: Towards an Integrated Approach

This dissertation proposes the Integrated Approach to Structural Glass Safety, based on four clearly defined element safety properties, damage sensitivity, relative resistance, redundancy, and fracture mode. The Element Safety Diagram (ESD) is introduced to provide an easy-to-read graphical representation of these properties. The safety...

Seismic interferometry-turning noise into signal

Turning noise into useful data—every geophysicist's dream? And now it seems possible. The field of seismic interferometry has at its foundation a shift in the way we think about the parts of the signal that are currently filtered out of most analyses—complicated seismic codas (the multiply scattered parts of seismic waveforms) and background...