Civil Engineering

Civil Engineering is the oldest and processional engineering fields in the world. This is a major that concerns all the construction design for daily life. As usual, some of people think that the civil engineering is only dealing with the municipal and government construction. The civil engineering includes the transportation, water resources, environmental, structural, geotechnical, earthquake engineering, atmospheric science and land surveying as well. Everyone can’t live without civil engineering, and it likes the people can’t keep alive without water. The civil engineers give human a place to stay, pure water to drink, fresh air to breathe, and the routes reach everywhere in this world. Civil engineering is the basic of the life; also it is a kind of art in the world, such as a building, people can live and work in it, it is also the decoration of this place.

The reason that I selected the civil engineering program for my future career life is that there was a really horrible earthquake in 2008 in China. Probably everybody should hear about it before. It is still the nightmare in my life even though that I was not in that area at that time. There were so many people dead in that natural disaster. Also there were large quantities bad building and design in that area. Large percentage of the building crashed in that earthquake. Children were killed by the structural failure. At that time, I made a decision that I will make the building never fail and do my best to protect more people’s properties and lives. I am so proud of myself is one of the civil engineers. There are only six specified fields in civil engineering department at NDSU. Geotechnical, water resource, environmental, transportation, structural, and material is combined this program. The material is only available for graduate students to do researching.  All the undergraduate students should have all the intro level classes for each field, and after that they must select at least 3 fields in technical electives. That means the civil engineers who graduate from college not only can involve the area they select; also they can do all types of the job related with civil engineering.

The three fields I chose in program are structural, transportation, and water resource. Structural is the best field in civil engineering in my mind. It will deal with all kinds of the buildings, bridges, towers and all the structural-design-in construction. The structural engineers have to do analyzing structural, designing structural, and constructing structural. Structural analysis and design require the students must familiar with the software, the design code, and all the manual of the design.  They should consider all the factors can affect the structures unstable, such as the seismic load, wind load and so on. The safety is the priority purpose in all structural engineers’ mind. The transportation engineers should consider the roads, airports, shipping, and traffic planning. Also, they have more specified classes for each of the part in transportation engineering. Water resource engineering is a part that handles the water quality, watershed, water and wastewater treatment and the subjects all concern the water.  Water is the most important resource in the world. The water resource engineering is working on to get a better water quality and condition, control the water consuming, treat the wastewater to reuse purpose, protect and control the flood. The only class I took from water resource engineering is watershed modeling.

Unethical construction

Recently, there was a tragedy that happened in Henan, China, before the Lunar Chinese New Year. It is located in Yichang part of Lianhuo highway, Henan Province. Lianhuo Highway was opened for public at 2002, it is 4395 kilometers long. The Lianhuo Highway is starts from Lianyungang City, and ends at Huoerguosi City. The Yichang Bridge was used for public transport for 10 years, now it was crashed by explode by fireworks. I thought no one can adapt this statement. So I did some research about this disaster. It is really hard to figure out the relevant information about this safety issue in Chinese network. The Yichang Bridge was crashed by the fireworks exploding on it according to official statement. It sounds ridiculous that the fireworks can destroy a highway bridge.

 Analyzing Reason

This tragedy was happened at 9 on February 1st 2013.  We can’t stop thinking how many fireworks supposed caused the bridge damage. It is impossible obviously only by one truck of fireworks. So, there should be a real reason that the Yichang Bridge issue happened. After the bridge crashed, there were so many photographers in that place. Based on the photos they took from the on the site, we can easily find that the steel rebar size can’t support the real load applied by the traffic and dead load by the concrete and pavement. It is not the steel rebar, it seems they are all steel strand wire. What are the differences between steel rebar and steel strand wire?  Steel rebar is the real steel adjust by the diameter size, also the section will be applied by the ratio of components.  The steel strand wire is combined and twisted of the thin steel wire. Steel strand wire only can support the less load structure, it is not as strong as the steel rebar in reinforced concrete. Based on this reason, we know this issue should relate with engineering ethics. It could have happened in the procedure of design or construction. The engineers’ design probably did not satisfy the requirement for the load combination for the bridge deck. But as the experience I have, it has more possibility that happened in construction process. The contractor used the steel strand wire instead of steel rebar; in this case, they could save part of budget in construction.
Ethics
According with the engineer ethic code, the engineer should hold paramount the safety, health, welfare of the public. In this case, the construction engineers didn’t apply the ethical code into the procedure of construction. For lower the expense of this project, they constructed the reinforce concrete with steel strand wire.

Also, it is not the only issue happening in this world. It is a dilemma with business and engineer. If the contractor is based on business purpose, they will raise the budget and the profit to the first place.  Only thing to be considered by businessmen is the how much money they can have in a project. Nevertheless, the project is public construction and should be concerned the public safety and welfare. As an engineer, they should hold the ethical code when they design and construct every project. They should set the public safety in the first place in mind. This is a most conflict we have nowadays with ethical problem.

Whatever the role the contractor plays, the public safety should be the most important issue in their mind, and I hope they will realize and do a better job in the future.

reviewing of AutoCAD

Reviewing of AutoCAD

AutoCAD is software that applies the users to design and drawing in a computer. It is the most important software for civil engineering field. All the basic drawing and design will be punched into AutoCAD and saved in computer. Also it could handle the 2D and 3D design in this software. There are a lot of versions now. Today I will review the AutoCAD 3D for Civil Engineering.

As my experience in these few years, almost all the designs of the courses in civil engineering program will use AutoCAD for sure. Even though it is not the most important software we used in a design, but it is still the one we can’t forget. It is easy to use, and has better interface to access. I did a lot of works with AutoCAD before, and I found that it is the best software that I used before for basic design and 2D design ever. Also it can do the most accurate design with different as real design. There are so many tools we can use in AutoCAD, and almost satisfied all the need we probably will use in design.  

But the AutoCAD is still not the perfect software, and lots of customers complain issue with AutoCAD. The part that I hate most should be the drawing procedure. There are two ways you can draw the basic line in AutoCAD. It is easier to draw a line by the mouse or just punch the coordinate number in the data bar. Even there are two ways we can draw the line, but they all have the problems when we try to draw something.  As the first one, directly use mouse to draw, we cannot easily measure the length that we drew. Also, the direction is another issue we can’t control by mouse. If we draw by typing the coordinate number into access bar, it can solve all the problems happened in first way, but we will have more calculation than before. That means we will have heavier work than we expected.

There is a real issue happening in NDSU that every civil engineering students complain with.AutoCAD has bad compatibility with different version. In all the computer clusters in NDSU have the AutoCAD with Version 2013, but in CE computer cluster, the entire PC has the 2012 version. When we design with 2013 version, save the file, it can’t be opened in 2012 version. That means, if we design in library and are not finished yet, we can’t continues to work on the design in the CE cluster.

The bad situation I met before with AutoCAD is when I finished the design and I tried to save the file into computer, the AutoCAD just crashed. Everyone knows the drawing design will be based on so many calculations by the software and computer. When we finished a design, the software will apply a million times calculation in the backstage. It will easily crash.  It is the worst feeling definitely. And the AutoCAD doesn’t supply the auto save, so we have to remember to save when we finish each stage of design.Doing this will protect your design better.

There are a lot of issues that will happen when you deal with AutoCAD. It is not the perfect software, but also it is a good software compare with others. It still is the software desired by the civil engineering field in the future.

Earthquake

This is an earthquake frequent time period in China. As the number that I have from internet, 57  earthquakes were determined in China from January 26th to February 26th . It is a horrible number that can make everyone in China feel uncomfortable.  . We can look backward in 2008 in China. There was an 8.0 magnitude earthquake happened in Wenchuan, China. Official figures stated that 69,197 were confirmed dead, including 68,636 in Sichuan province, and 374,176 injured, with 18,222 listed as missing. The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless, though the number could be as high as 11 million. From the number, we can easier to see that how does a big earthquake effect on human lives and properties. It can make homeless and hopeless for human; also it may generate a death for family members. Earthquake is a natural disaster that we cannot avoid. They happen randomly in any time and place. An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. When the earthquake is coming, there are two componentts in seismic waves, one is longitudinal, and one is horizontal. Intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale. The shallower an earthquake, the more damage to structures it causes.
I am studying in Civil Engineering department at NDSU. Otherwise, I am working in Structural Engineering field now. When we design a structure, we should do load calculation and load combination before we start design overall structure. Seismic load is one of the important factors in load calculation and load combination. In case we need to do seismic load in North Dakota area, we can simplified round it to 1% of the building dead load. But for the real design, we cannot do seismic load in this way.
Why is seismic load so important for a structural? In fact, there are only two loads that can affect horizontally. Seismic load is one that can affect the structure in the horizontal direction. It will totally change the structural arrangement if different seismic load applied. For the steel, if we have larger seismic load, we need to add braces on each side to support the structure will not fail to one direction. When we will design reinforced concrete structural, seismic load will involve the load calculation in specific section. Such as if we have a larger seismic load, the rebar in the sidewall will be replaced by a heavy one to ensure the wall can support more load.
As usual, the municipal building can afford 7.0 magnitude earthquake all over the world, although some of the countries have a higher or lower requirement, but all of the requirements are around 7.0 magnitude. How does the earthquake affect personal properties? When the magnitude of an earthquake is greater than 7.0, it is already out of the safety consideration of the designer. The building may fail by the large horizontal force due to the structure. As usual, the designer will apply larger load when they design the building structure for safety considerations. It means that the constructor will replace heavier member in columns, beams, and girders for safety factor. In case the structure crashes, it will destroy so many families no doubt. It is not only a disaster for a simple family, but also a nightmare for a country.
All the civil engineers should pay more attention in earthquake to protect our family and property. It is not good for ourselves, also good for everyone who lives in this planet.