Thursday, March 27, 2008

Livin Life in the Land of Structures

Yeah Steel Manual!!!

Annnnnd . . . were back.

Spring Break was good - its important to step away from a project and get some fresh eyes now and then. I was also going slowly (some might say not so slowly) insain from a bunch of stuff - so it was good to get out of NYC for a little bit. But man am I glad to back now! And as an added bonus - I've almost entirely stopped shaking and twitching! Good ol' sun and sleep. amazing.

At any rate:we met as a group on Monday and reassessed where the project was at and where we really needed to start to focus our design energy. Since the clients are very happy with the concept and the state of the current design, the next six weeks is really about figuring out how we are actually going to be building this thing! So details, details, details - materials, numbers, prices and all that good fun stuff.

So in that vein, Johnny and I have been swimming in structures land and figuring out PV-ness. My spreadsheet is kicking butt FYI: sizing beams, drawing trusses, figuring loads. Yeah Structures! Its actually really quite fun - I mean, you wouldn't want to do this all day every day or anything, but it is kind of nice to get an actual answer for a change and to work with real things now and then. I sized the large frames as W's yesterday and ended up with wicked heavy members - so I re-did it using square tubing and using much smaller spans (more columns - really, trying to think about the frames as a kind of big truss, not just a column and beam) and got muuuuch more manageable numbers. The heaviest beam ends up like 250 lbs and most are like 150 - so totally stuff we can work with. Very different from a 28' long, 2500 lb W14x79. Yeah. I get to go do some columns now and try and get everything to a place where we can talk with Harriet (our Structures prof) about all our numbers tomorrow after class.

Also - just so were all on the same page: I really have no idea what I'm doing here and its probably all wrong - but I'm giving it a shot! And so, on to the next thing . . .

Also: Tomorrow: Stanford 98, Texas 92. Calling it right now. ;)

Best. Spreadsheet. Ever.

Will give you a minimum I value since the deflection is what is determining our member sizes. I'm probably the best structural engineer you know, right?

2 comments:

Star said...

In case anyone else is curious about the outcome of your NCAA predictions . . . Texas 82, Cardinal 62.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=284000029

I think there was someone who called that.

Oh Baby Baby! said...

You people should watch a real sport. I believe opening day at Fenway is this Tuesday...Go Sox!