Dr Vincent de VIlle of Bureau Greisch de Liège gave an enthralling lecture in DIT Bolton St last night about the design and construction of the MIllau Viaduct (emblazoned on this website). The Millau Viaduct, completed in 2004, has already taken its rightful place as an engineering masterpiece and this was reflected in the turnout for the lecture. Over 150 people attended - one of the highest attendances ever for an Institution of Structural Engineers, Republic of Ireland Branch, Evening Meeting. The lecture left even experienced engineers breathless as Dr de Ville explained the many bold decisions made in both the design and construction of the deck. Indeed he made designing for 5 m deflections during construction seem reasonable!

The lecture was certainly one of the best seen here in recent years. Dr de Ville modestly claims that the subject matter is the reason for success. However, the way in which extremely complex structural engineering ideas were conveyed meant that even the lay-people that attended were able to follow and enjoy the excitement of this design. The lecture reinforced a pride in structural engineering, and the accomplishments that are possible given a bold vision and adequate resources.

Some relevant links to this talk are:

• A paper similar to the talk: The design and construction of the Millau Viaduct;
• Millau Viaduct in Structurae;
• Another paper: Non-linear behaviour of the piers of the Millau Viaduct;
• Foster + Partners website article;
• Requisite Wikipedia link;
• Official website.

What is the Semester 1 Syndrome?

Simply put, it is the tendency for students, fresh into 3rd year, to put an inadequate amount of work in, and who consequently don’t perform as well as they wish.

Have you any evidence for it?

Yes from experience. Semester 1 exam results tend to be quite poor, with a high number of students having to resit the exams. Surprisingly, 9 months later, with no further classes in the subjects, students generally improve their marks significantly, sometimes by over 60%. That’s the Semester 1 Syndrome!

As an aside, many lecturers give individual feedback, without the “I’m being assessed” feel to it. Interestingly, in the majority of cases, such feedback correctly predicts whether students would pass or not. I think the moral is, when given personalized and informal feedback well in advance of any assessment, please act on it!

Why does it happen?

This is complex but the probable answer lies in the way that the students have ‘engineered’ exam success up to the point of arrival in 3rd year. Unfortunately the Points System and Leaving Cert. encourage a learn-by-rote model as being optimal for exam success. The first two years in third level can be approached in the same way, but it gets increasingly difficult. The failings of this learning model come to a head in 3rd year when the material that must be known is minimal - extensive exam handouts mean that little memorization is required. Instead, the material must be understood. Simple really, but since this is the first time students may actually have to try understand material for exam success, it poses a real difficulty and a harsh awakening in many cases. And by understood, we mean that the material is second nature and that disparate pieces of information can be assimilated into different coherent forms so that reasonably complex engineering problems can be solved.

Ok, so how can it be avoided?

Well I’ll bet you know the answer to this, in the same way you know that you should eat more fruit and vegetables. For every hour spent in class, at least another hour must be spent at home doing the following:

• assimilating the material already covered;
• reading ahead on the new material;
• practicing examples until exhaustion (!);
• preparing questions to ask the lecturer in the next class;
• studying with colleagues - peer-learning is very effective.

Last year a quick class survey noted that over 90% of students had part-time jobs during term-time. In a week, it is simply impossible to spend say 30 hours in class, another 30 hours of home study, and then do a job. It seems that for short-term gain (i.e. some extra money now), the longer-term benefits of performing well in college are ignored. These longer-term benefits include improved employment prospects and the possibility of a higher starting salary for 1st class and 2:1 Honours Degree awards. It’s called full-time education for a reason!

One further issue that can significantly affect performance is the abuse of alcohol amongst 3rd level students. A recent study summarized here and fully reported here shows that use of alcohol is increasing amongst undergraduate students. This can only have a negative affect upon coursework. Whilst certainly the college experience is not all about hard work and learning, going too far the other way is not a recipe for success or happiness. If you or a friend is affected by alcohol abuse you should contact the student counselling service.

Anyway, the following site takes a funny look at presentation of a difficult dataset, showing the common (and very poor) method, and a good method:

Red-shirt fatalities in Star Trek

The paper titled Determination of bridge lifetime dynamic amplification factor using finite element analysis of critical loading scenarios will appear in the September 2008 edition of Engineering Structures. This journal has an impact factor of 0.986 for 2007.

This paper outlines the simulations behind the dynamic interaction model which was used in the bivariate extreme value work, detailed here.

The full reference for this paper is:

Gonzalez, A., Rattigan, P., OBrien, E.J. and Caprani, C.C. (2008), ‘Determination of bridge lifetime dynamic amplification factor using finite element analysis of critical loading scenarios’, Engineering Structures, 30(9), September, pp. 2330-2337. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2008.01.017.

He was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer and following this gave his Last Lecture. He survived way beyond the 3-6 months given him by medics.  The book and lecture are moving and very memorable and leave you with a desire to achieve your childhood dreams. Well worth reading or viewing:

• Book
• Video
• Carnegie Mellon - In memorium
• Randy’s homepage.

  

Ok, so I can’t resist a bad pun. Anyway, this super example of tension field action is outside the structural laboratories of the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées (LCPC) in Paris, which is the French Government body for research into roads and bridges.

This visit to LCPC was part of a European research project. Myself and my colleagues at UCD are working with researchers from LCPC on the Seventh Framework, HeavyRoute Project. In particular we are aiding them on Work Package 2.5: Impact of HGVs on Roads and Infrastructure.

Engineer:

You want answers?

Architect:

I think I’m entitled to them.

Engineer:

You want answers?

Architect:

I want the truth!!

Engineer:

You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has FLOORS. And those FLOORS have to be SUPPORTED BY COLUMNS. Who’s gonna DESIGN THEM? You? You, MR. ARCHITECT?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for LOST FLOOR SPACE and you curse the COLUMNS. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that THOSE COLUMNS, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…

You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that DESIGN TEAM. You need me on that DESIGN TEAM.

We use words like DESIGN, CODE, ANALYSIS…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent SUPPORTING something. You use ‘em as a punchline.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my DESIGN to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very STRUCTURES I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a STEEL MANUAL and DESIGN a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!

Architect:

Did you SCHEDULE THE COLUMNS?

Engineer:

(quietly) I did the job you HIRED me to do.

Architect:

Did you SCHEDULE THE COLUMNS?!!

Engineer:

You’re goddamn right I did!!

Thanks to Ritchie for this gem!

Even though it’s been a long wait, Structural Safety is a well-reputed journal with an impact factor of 1.25 (2006) which is high for a civil-engineering journal. The journal home is here. The paper is available here, but may require a purchase if you don’t have an institutional login:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.strusafe.2006.11.006

The abstract for the paper is:

In recent years, highway bridge load assessment has been recognised as an area through which savings can be made by avoiding unnecessary bridge refurbishment and replacement. Load effects in bridges result from single truck crossings or multiple-truck presence events which are, statistically, not identically distributed. Conventional approaches fit statistical distributions to mixtures of non-identically distributed load effects. Inaccuracies in the conventional approach are identified and an alternative approach is developed to find the characteristic load effects. Theoretical and field data are used to show the potential implications of conventional techniques and to demonstrate the application of the new approach.

• FEBeam: a finite element beam analysis package;
• TrussMaster: a truss analysis package.

These programs are close to fully-fledged but there are still some rough edges. Also made available are:

• TrussGenerator: an auxilliary program to TrussMaster;
• Steel Section DB: a steel sections database in VB;
• Graph Displacements: of a beam element;
• Operations: machine-dependent operator timing (+,-,x,/).

• Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm;
• Runge-Kutta, 4th order program;
• Generalized Extreme Value distribution fitting program;
• Machine Epsilon calculator;
• Matrix class based on STL;
• Monte Carlo calculation of pi;
• Square root of a matrix program;
• Steelbeam analysis program.

The Visual Basic section has also been updated, with some nice little apps and scripts for download:

• Recently Used Files module;
• EC5 Joist design program;
• Linear Simultaneous Equations solution program;
• Stochastic Beam Design program.

Some of the above programs are basic whilst others have hard-to-find algorithms encoded. If you check a program out give me some feedback!