16.Philosohpy of Structural Design16.Philosohpy of Structural Design.doc

Philosophy of Steuctural Design A structure engineering project can be divided into three phases: planning, design, and construction. Structural design involves determining the most suitable proportions of a structure and dimensioning the structural elements and details of which it is composed. This is the most highly technical and mathematical phase of a structural engineering project, but it cannot-and certainly should not-be conducted without being fully coordinated with the planning and construction phases of the project. The successful designer is at all times fully conscious of the various considerations that were involved in the preliminary planning for the structure and, likewise, of the various problems that may later be encountered in its construction. Specially, the structural design of any structure first involves the establishment of the loading, and other design conditions that must be resisted by the structure and therefore must be considered in its design. Then comes the analysis (or computation) of the internal gross forces (thrust, shears, bending moments, and twisting moments), stress intensities, strains, deflections, and reactions produced by the loads, temperature, shrinkage, creep, or other design conditions. Finally comes the proportioning and selection of materials of the members and connections so as to resist adequately the effects produced by the design conditions. The criteria used to judge whether particular proportions will result in the desired behavior reflect accumulated knowledge (theory, field and model test, and practical experience, intuition, and judgment. For most common civil engineering structures such as bridges and buildings, the usual practice in the past has been to design on the basis of a comparison of allowable stress intensities with those produced by the service loadings and other design conditions.This traditional basis for design is called elastic design because the allowable stress intensities are chosen in accor