Aesthetics and New Performance Demands Shape Today's Structural Design

摘要

Armed with more versatile building materials and more powerful design software, engineering professionals are combining imagination and structural performance in ways impossible just a few years ago. They are being challenged to execute such flights of fancy as the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and to restore earthquake-damaged structures such as the Stadium of Peace and Friendship in Athens, Greece, where events of the 2004 Olympiad will take place. They are expected to bring more imagination and aesthetic judgment to their work all the time, while also cutting costs, speeding construction, and never losing sight of their primary responsibility for building sound, successful structures. The definition of a sound structure is also changing, as engineer Lou Colarusso of Solon, Ohio-based Erico, Inc.'s concrete division points out. "There has been a focus on improving structural integrity since the North-ridge Earthquake [in January 1994 in California]. Then after Oklahoma City, we had an emphasis on blast resistance," he adds, referring to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995. Most recently, he concludes, special attention is being given to fire resistance performance. As a result, Colarusso says, engineers are looking for ways to make buildings more robust even as they continue to cut cost and time from the construction process. He cites as examples Erico's line of rebar splicing and terminating products, all intended to make it easier to create complex joints between columns and floor slabs and other building components.