Use of Steep roofs in buildings

Steep slopes generally serve both the purposes. In areas of heavy snowfall, flat roofs would be loaded with snow which may jeopardize the roof's load bearing capacity and may lead to cracks. If cracks occur, the melted snow would also enter the building. Steep slopes slide down the fallen snow in pretty short time. The Roof pitch is decided on the basis of annual snowfall in the region.  We know that air is a bad conductor...

Fatigue in Building materials

Fatigue is the weakening of a building material when it is loaded and unloaded repeatedly, the load being above the particular value called the fatigue strength/fatigue limit/endurance limit. Fatigue strength is defined as the load value below which the material would not yield for any number of cycles of loading and unloading. The fun fact is the nominal stress values which cause the fatigue are mostly much smaller than the actual strength, technically known as the Ultimate tensile strength of the particular material....

Internship at Indian Railways

Most of the zonal offices under the Indian Railways organize training and internship camps for both under-graduate and post-graduate engineering students during the summers. In cities like Jabalpur, Allahabad, etc. which are important divisions of their respective Railway zones, training camps of 15 days and/or 1 month are conducted and interested students can apply for them as per the deadlines.  For civil engineering students, Construction department and the Maintenance department are of main interest. It is less...

Structural Cracks: Causes and their identification

The various causes are:• Structural cracks 1) Due to incorrect design2) Faulty construction 3) Overloading• Non Structural cracks1) Moisture changes: Shrinkage effect,depending on the water content, cement concrete and aggregates.2) Thermal movement: Concrete made in hot weather needs more water for same work-ability and hence results in more shrinkage.3) Elastic deformation4) Creep: Building items...

Greatest Civil engineers of all time

I'll go with Indian engineers first: Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya: chief designer of the flood protection system for the city of Hyderabad, and India's greatest Civil engineer till date.  Kanwar Sen : Came up with the ideas of Rajasthan Canal, Ganga Canal and the master plan for the development of Narmada Project. He contributed his utmost in design and building up the Central Water and power Commission. E. Sreedharan:...

Things Civil Engineers know better than anybody!

The few ones I suppose are:1. Technically diamond is more elastic than rubber as Elastic modulus of Diamond is in the range 1000-1200 GPa whereas that of rubber is approximately 0.1 GPa. This means on application of large loading, diamond may be in the elastic limit but rubber might go beyond it.2. While widening road pavements on Horizontal Curves, apart from providing mechanical widening based on calculations, psychological...

Watering of bricks: What's the reason behind?

There are three reasons for submerging bricks/blocks:1. Test for absorption: A brick is submerged in water for 24 hours. If its weight after 24 hours exceeds its dry weight by 20%, the brick is not used for construction. 2. Test for presence of soluble salts: After 24-hour submergence, if grey/white deposits occur on the brick, soluble salts are present. If white deposits cover more than 50% of the surface, the bricks are not used for construction purpose.3. Quench the thirst: Its said that...