Structural Analysis: Why Soldiers Break Step on Bridges
How engineers predict the forces and movements in real structures, from load paths and influence lines to stiffness matrices and resonance.
Structural Analysis · 50 questions
Try 3 questions
1. In structural design, what is meant by 'dead load'?
- Loads from people and moving furniture
- Loads that act only during earthquakes
- The structure's permanent self-weight
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Answer: The structure's permanent self-weight
Dead loads are the self-weight of the structure plus permanent parts like floors, walls and fixed equipment.
2. In a typical framed building, what is the usual path that a floor load follows to the ground?
- Columns to beams to slab to foundation
- Slab straight down to the foundation
- Slab to beams to columns to foundation
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Answer: Slab to beams to columns to foundation
The slab spans to beams, beams deliver their reactions to columns, and columns carry the load down to the foundations.
3. If the design wind speed on a building doubles, roughly how does the wind pressure on its walls change?
- It quadruples
- It rises by half
- It doubles
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Answer: It quadruples
Wind pressure is proportional to the square of wind speed, so doubling speed gives about four times the pressure.
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