STRUCTURAL
ENGINEERING: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
by
Graduate Student of
Civil & Environmental
Engineering
Pennsylvania State
University
The experience of engineering abroad extends much further than simply applying metric units! The dual focus of this seminar discusses insights gained during a three-semester stay in Stuttgart, Germany as well as research applications for bridge rehabilitation.
The University of Stuttgart is home to Drs. Joerg Schlaich and Kurt Schaefer, pioneers in the development of the strut-and-tie model for the design of concrete structures. Courses and research in their department provided a view into European engineering education, different in many ways from its American counterpart. A current research topic in Stuttgart is development of the DIN 1045-1 concrete design code, the first national standard whose shear provisions are consistently based on the strut-and-tie model.
Despite the growing
importance of bridge rehabilitation, design codes can be difficult to apply to
the analysis of existing structures’ capacity. An older German bridge in need
of rehabilitation was selected as a basis of comparison for the DIN 1045-1 and
AASHTO standards’ shear capacity provisions, which in the latter code are based
on the modified compression field theory. Of particular interest with this
bridge were numerous uncommon structural details and their influence on the
analysis.