Engineers of the past vs Todays Engineers

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: nourdmrolNMT1
think of all the bridges they build that are still standing etc.

I was going to bring up that exact example when I read your post.

Look at all the new bridges. Ugly plain concrete, with some steel beams.

Looks at the old bridges - made completely out of stones into beautiful arches and last so much longer.

Because now much greater emphasis is put on coming up with "value engineering" designs that are economically driven (ie, use minimal materials...concrete, steel, timber) yet still safe.

Back then, the engineers didn't put much thought into how much the construction materials would cost.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Look at all the new bridges. Ugly plain concrete, with some steel beams.

Looks at the old bridges - made completely out of stones into beautiful arches and last so much longer.

Those modern concrete bidges have alot more steel in them than the earlier steel bridges, it's just hidden in the concrete. Those old stone bridges would be beat to crap in short order if subjected to modern loads.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
[And FWIW several transistor circuits had vacuum tube equivalents before they were miniaturized to transistors. Does that make the transistor circuits evolutionary as well?

Functionality-wise, they did what other devices did, but design-wise they were revolutionary. They operated in a completely different manner. A LCD clock and a mechanical clock do the same thing, but they operate completely differently.

 

[MrDudeMan]

ignorance is high in this thread. you can easily tell who the people are they have actually graduated with an engineering degree (or are on the way) and everyone else. engineering is a way of thinking. rahvin, blueweasel, and raynorwolfcastle are all engineers and actually have a clue what they are talking about. im a junior in college and i am studying computer engineering, so im not totally clueless either.

seriously, people that think they have any idea what they are talking about without taking a single engineering core class are just stupid. engineering today is not easier simply because we have better tools. if that was true, i guess all of our modern doctors suck too! i mean they can just feed a tube down your throat with a camera to see what is going on in your lungs instead of actually operating to fix it. oh wait, whats that? an engineer built that fiberoptic channel and designed the camera? but how? we arent as smart as people 100 years ago...

the arguement that we could not build the pyramids is bunk also. we sent someone to the moon...how exactly do you justify that we are not a capable generation? if only you non-engineers had any idea how complicated things really are in the design process, you would shut your uninformed, ignorant mouths. id like to see some of you calculate the skin tension on a bell pier at 25 feet in a shale...and then tell me the max load based on the properties of the soil and the reinforcement inside the pier. or tell me what a photolithographic machine does, including very specific details down to electron implantation and masking.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: bonkers325

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: rahvin


A modern structure has NO less than a factor of safety of 3. This means that maximum loads are multiplied by 3. In a typical commerical setting you can stack 4 cars on every square foot and not cause failure. There is absolutely NO reason to have a higher factor of safety than we use today.

That's not true. I'm a structural engineer and not everything I've designed (which met all building code standards) has a FS of => 3.0.

The multiplication factor varies depending on the type of load (dead, live, wind, fluid loads etc) and very rarely exceeds a 3.0 FS. A FS of 3.0 would be an over-conservation design in most cases since the loads stipulated by the building codes are usually higher than any realistic load to be experienced by the structure.

you're a structural engineer? i'm a senior civil and i want to specialize in structural engineering. i was under the impression that there werent any structural engineers on ATOT, lol. everyone seems to be mech/comp

Yup (well, I was). I majored in Civil Engineering and emphasized structural design in all my classes (steel design, concrete design, foundations). After I graduated, I went to work for a structural engineering firm doing mainly steel and concrete building design for architects. I did that for 4-years but recently switched to another firm doing general civil design.

However, I still do a good bit of structural design for the new firm (just finished a big wastewater treatment facility with some large concrete tanks). I sit for the PE exam in October.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Because now much greater emphasis is put on coming up with "value engineering" designs that are economically driven (ie, use minimal materials...concrete, steel, timber) yet still safe.

Back then, the engineers didn't put much thought into how much the construction materials would cost.

Yup, the reason new bridges are often ugly has nothing to do with engineering and everything to do with the cheapness and utilitarian nature of modern society. Every attempt to add beauty to designs results in bitching from folks about how their tax dollars are being squandered.

 

[bonkers325]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: bonkers325

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: rahvin


A modern structure has NO less than a factor of safety of 3. This means that maximum loads are multiplied by 3. In a typical commerical setting you can stack 4 cars on every square foot and not cause failure. There is absolutely NO reason to have a higher factor of safety than we use today.

That's not true. I'm a structural engineer and not everything I've designed (which met all building code standards) has a FS of => 3.0.

The multiplication factor varies depending on the type of load (dead, live, wind, fluid loads etc) and very rarely exceeds a 3.0 FS. A FS of 3.0 would be an over-conservation design in most cases since the loads stipulated by the building codes are usually higher than any realistic load to be experienced by the structure.

you're a structural engineer? i'm a senior civil and i want to specialize in structural engineering. i was under the impression that there werent any structural engineers on ATOT, lol. everyone seems to be mech/comp

Yup (well, I was). I majored in Civil Engineering and emphasized structural design in all my classes (steel design, concrete design, foundations). After I graduated, I went to work for a structural engineering firm doing mainly steel and concrete building design for architects. I did that for 4-years but recently switched to another firm doing general civil design.

However, I still do a good bit of structural design for the new firm (just finished a big wastewater treatment facility with some large concrete tanks). I sit for the PE exam in October.

Do you use ASD or LRFD when doing steel design? I learned LRFD design last semester, going to learn concrete this fall... does your firm emphasize hand calculations? Or do you do most of your stuff on programs like STAAD or RISA and do hand check? How much do firms expect you to know after you graduate and are an entry-level engineer?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: ironwing

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Look at all the new bridges. Ugly plain concrete, with some steel beams.

Looks at the old bridges - made completely out of stones into beautiful arches and last so much longer.

Those modern concrete bidges have alot more steel in them than the earlier steel bridges, it's just hidden in the concrete. Those old stone bridges would be beat to crap in short order if subjected to modern loads.

Yup, that's the problem with older structures. Typically, old buildings and bridges gained their strength by using pure mass and had minimal reinforcing since this was typically prior to advancement in concrete and you saw mainly masonry (ie, brick) structures. Under current codes, the amount of force experienced on a structure from earthquake events is a function of mass and the old structures wouldn't stand up too well against a large earthquake event.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
[And FWIW several transistor circuits had vacuum tube equivalents before they were miniaturized to transistors. Does that make the transistor circuits evolutionary as well?

Functionality-wise, they did what other devices did, but design-wise they were revolutionary. They operated in a completely different manner. A LCD clock and a mechanical clock do the same thing, but they operate completely differently.

So then you agree that at every point in history you always have a few true innovators which are really researchers in that they have PhDs as opposed to the garden-variety BSc engineer which just build on what the innovators come up with.

As a side note you can't compare the mechanical clock and an LCD clock because they differ in principle (mechanical vs. piezoelectric) but you can compare simple transistor circuits to vacuum tube circuits because the topology remains the same (that is transistors are functionally equivalent to vacuum tubes).

 

[dandruff]

It all depends on who is commissioning the project .. i.e. CLIENT

... look at the bridges designed by Santiago Calatrava - amazing sculptural quality ... no way they could have been constructed without the modern tools and knowledge ... but if Santiago Calatrava was deisgning for lets say ... Missouri DOT ... he umm.. prolly committed suicide by now ...

pic 1

or here you go:
Calatrava's work

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
ignorance is high in this thread. you can easily tell who the people are they have actually graduated with an engineering degree (or are on the way) and everyone else. engineering is a way of thinking. rahvin, blueweasel, and raynorwolfcastle are all engineers and actually have a clue what they are talking about. im a junior in college and i am studying computer engineering, so im not totally clueless either.

seriously, people that think they have any idea what they are talking about without taking a single engineering core class are just stupid. engineering today is not easier simply because we have better tools. if that was true, i guess all of our modern doctors suck too! i mean they can just feed a tube down your throat with a camera to see what is going on in your lungs instead of actually operating to fix it. oh wait, whats that? an engineer built that fiberoptic channel and designed the camera? but how? we arent as smart as people 100 years ago...

the arguement that we could not build the pyramids is bunk also. we sent someone to the moon...how exactly do you justify that we are not a capable generation? if only you non-engineers had any idea how complicated things really are in the design process, you would shut your uninformed, ignorant mouths. id like to see some of you calculate the skin tension on a bell pier at 25 feet in a shale...and then tell me the max load based on the properties of the soil and the reinforcement inside the pier. or tell me what a photolithographic machine does, including very specific details down to electron implantation and masking.

Your post reeks of self-righteous ignorance.

It's easy to tell those who have experience, and those who are still kids who worship college. The kids in college know how things *should* work, the adults with experience know how things *do* work.

Also, people seem to be fooled into believing that a degree increases your IQ. It doesn't. A sub-par mind will always operate like a sub-par mind regardless of education. Meanwhile, superior minds will always have that extra potential that will allow them to mentally outmaneuver their competition.

On one hand you have all the average people going to college, getting degrees, and thinking they're special and more informed than everyone else, and on the other hand you have the titans of industry like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison running the show.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: bonkers325

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: bonkers325

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel

Originally posted by: rahvin


A modern structure has NO less than a factor of safety of 3. This means that maximum loads are multiplied by 3. In a typical commerical setting you can stack 4 cars on every square foot and not cause failure. There is absolutely NO reason to have a higher factor of safety than we use today.

That's not true. I'm a structural engineer and not everything I've designed (which met all building code standards) has a FS of => 3.0.

The multiplication factor varies depending on the type of load (dead, live, wind, fluid loads etc) and very rarely exceeds a 3.0 FS. A FS of 3.0 would be an over-conservation design in most cases since the loads stipulated by the building codes are usually higher than any realistic load to be experienced by the structure.

you're a structural engineer? i'm a senior civil and i want to specialize in structural engineering. i was under the impression that there werent any structural engineers on ATOT, lol. everyone seems to be mech/comp

Yup (well, I was). I majored in Civil Engineering and emphasized structural design in all my classes (steel design, concrete design, foundations). After I graduated, I went to work for a structural engineering firm doing mainly steel and concrete building design for architects. I did that for 4-years but recently switched to another firm doing general civil design.

However, I still do a good bit of structural design for the new firm (just finished a big wastewater treatment facility with some large concrete tanks). I sit for the PE exam in October.

Do you use ASD or LRFD when doing steel design? I learned LRFD design last semester, going to learn concrete this fall... does your firm emphasize hand calculations? Or do you do most of your stuff on programs like STAAD or RISA and do hand check? How much do firms expect you to know after you graduate and are an entry-level engineer?

Well, I was taught steel in college using the LRFD method, but my employer used ASD. ASD is easy to pick up compared to LRFD, since you just reduce the allowable strength of the steel (Fb = 0.67 * Fy) instead of applying load factors.

There is still plenty of hand calculations, but the calculations are mainly kept "simple". I'm not trying to belittle what we did, but we used STAAD for the large projects when we needed to run a full DL/LL/Wind/Earthquake analysis on a large projects. Generally, you'll never use alot of the stuff you learned in steel design in day-to-day practice, but it's important to understand the reasoning behind it.

As far as real world engineering goes, most consulting engineers will tell you that your engineering degree simply tells them you are ready to be trained. If they designed everything the way they taught in school, they would all go broke. As long as you have the general concepts down, you'll be just fine.

 

[Landroval]

Originally posted by: ironwing
I've worked with engineers of multiple generations and it comes down to the individual. Many have impressed the hell out of me and some have been "no so good". The things we are asking engineers to do have changed. We don't ask engineers to build giant new dams very often because we don't need giant new dams. We do ask them to refurbish old dams. The engineering to acomplish the retrofit might be as diffifult or even more difficult than building the dam in the first place but there isn't much glory in it.

One thing I have noticed is that young engineers spend alot more time in training/subordinate roles than the older engineers did. Some of the early atomic energy projects had chief engineers in their early thirties with the rest of the team fresh out of college. Standards for obtaining a P.E. are much more rigorous now.

Good point

 

[bonkers325]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Well, I was taught steel in college using the LRFD method, but my employer used ASD. ASD is easy to pick up compared to LRFD, since you just reduce the allowable strength of the steel (Fb = 0.67 * Fy) instead of applying load factors.

There is still plenty of hand calculations, but the calculations are mainly kept "simple". I'm not trying to belittle what we did, but we used STAAD for the large projects when we needed to run a full DL/LL/Wind/Earthquake analysis on a large projects. Generally, you'll never use alot of the stuff you learned in steel design in day-to-day practice, but it's important to understand the reasoning behind it.

As far as real world engineering goes, most consulting engineers will tell you that your engineering degree simply tells them you are ready to be trained. If they designed everything the way they taught in school, they would all go broke. As long as you have the general concepts down, you'll be just fine.

I was under the impression that ASD was being phased out and LRFD was in.

So I'm not expected to know how to fully analyze a 3-D structure by hand? :beer:

 

[magomago]

That and you also have to realize bulding big things isn't necessarily what engineering is about. Engineering is also shrinking everything down to MUCH smaller levels. MEMS based devices in the body, tissue engineering, biomechanies...all these things are emerging fields (you guys can tell i'm a BME, but to give credit every single BME professor here has their PhD in some other engineering discipline but wrote their MS/Phd Thesis on something related to Bio and Engineering) and the final goal won't be much larger than a grapefuit...IF that large. There is no way engineers in the past could ahve done that.

I think for PRACTICAL things a lot of stuff was pioneered by engineers earlier, but we do a LOT more refinement now that the old stuff can't even touch...

 

[FrankSaucedo]

I am a steel detailer in Texas. I have worked for a steel fabricator for almost ten years doing primarily commercial work. To date, I have not seen a strucuture designed using LRFD.

As far as the competence of engineers today, I think there are good structural engineers today and there are bad stuctural engineers. They do have better tools, but because of these tools, they are expected to put out projects in about half the time.

Further, there is a "design build" craze going around to do the process even faster. In my opinion a lot of the work that engineers used to do in the past, is now being done by the steel fabricator/detailer. For the most part, the engineer of record is responsible for member sizes and framing geometry. The steel fabricator is responsible for all the connection design and must provide connection design calculations to the engineer of record. Good engineers look at these calculations. Bad engineers don't even look at them and simply rely on someone else's work.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: bonkers325

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Well, I was taught steel in college using the LRFD method, but my employer used ASD. ASD is easy to pick up compared to LRFD, since you just reduce the allowable strength of the steel (Fb = 0.67 * Fy) instead of applying load factors.

There is still plenty of hand calculations, but the calculations are mainly kept "simple". I'm not trying to belittle what we did, but we used STAAD for the large projects when we needed to run a full DL/LL/Wind/Earthquake analysis on a large projects. Generally, you'll never use alot of the stuff you learned in steel design in day-to-day practice, but it's important to understand the reasoning behind it.

As far as real world engineering goes, most consulting engineers will tell you that your engineering degree simply tells them you are ready to be trained. If they designed everything the way they taught in school, they would all go broke. As long as you have the general concepts down, you'll be just fine.

I was under the impression that ASD was being phased out and LRFD was in.

So I'm not expected to know how to fully analyze a 3-D structure by hand? :beer:

ASD is slowly being phased out, but I know a lot of engineers that will be kicking and screaming when told they have to use LRFD exclusively (me included).

...and no, you don't need to be able to do a full 3D building design. Believe me, knowing
M=wl^2/8 goes a long way in structural design. AFAIK, the next version of the AISC manual will include both ASD and LRFD design (they are doing away with individual manuals).

 

[Spike]

I think some people are forgetting that ALL progression in the engineering field is just that, PROGRESSION. We are ALWAYS building off of previous generations and always moving foreward, we are "standing on the shoulders of giants" so to speak.

If not for the engineers 100 years ago we would not be making the discoveries and inventions we are today. This goes back to the first people experimenting with the new field called "math" or whatever they referred to it as. We are constantly using what others discovered, pioneered, etc... and moving forware.

Sure, today we can say how easy engineers have it compared to the "old days" without computers. What are we going to say in 100 years when we use some sort of virtual reality combined with holographics to model something. We would be like "man, how could they do any real work without our uber fast 50 trillion virtual transistor computers? they must have been REAL engineers unlike us."

Everything is relative, this is the same way. So back to the topic at hand, do I see engineers today better or worse than the past? I'm not sure, there are always those smarter and dumber than the rest and they pop up in each generation. I don't know who or what is going to pop up in ours but they will and breakthroughs will be made. Who knows where the next steps lead us. Remember, we do call it "progression"

-spike

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: FrankSaucedo
I am a steel detailer in Texas. I have worked for a steel fabricator for almost ten years doing primarily commercial work. To date, I have not seen a strucuture designed using LRFD.

As far as the competence of engineers today, I think there are good structural engineers today and there are bad stuctural engineers. They do have better tools, but because of these tools, they are expected to put out projects in about half the time.

Further, there is a "design build" craze going around to do the process even faster. In my opinion a lot of the work that engineers used to do in the past, is now being done by the steel fabricator/detailer. For the most part, the engineer of record is responsible for member sizes and framing geometry. The steel fabricator is responsible for all the connection design and must provide connection design calculations to the engineer of record. Good engineers look at these calculations. Bad engineers don't even look at them and simply rely on someone else's work.

I found out really quick that a good and reputable detailer is a structural engineer's and erecting contractor's best friend.

 

[magomago]

Now that I think of it more...I think that people may think "less" of engineers today because they don't have to sit there and plug and chug.

The professor who didn't like a part of an equation and substituted other stuff had too to make things simpler and approximate. With compters we dno't need to approximate as much so it can sit there and number crunch while engineers can focus more on design. And that is why today we are more creative then before IMO

 

[HombrePequeno]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: rahvin

A modern structure has NO less than a factor of safety of 3. This means that maximum loads are multiplied by 3. In a typical commerical setting you can stack 4 cars on every square foot and not cause failure. There is absolutely NO reason to have a higher factor of safety than we use today.

You misread my quote. I'm saying that the safety factor is LESS than it used to be. Nowadays it seems like things are built to do the bare minimum. If they build a house, they build it to last 50 years or so. Back in the 1800's, they built things to last for over a hundred years. My gf's house was built in the 1870's. The quality of the wood used it much higher, and it's thicker, also. Lots of brick and hardwoods. Not this cheap stucco and pine that falls apart in 10 years.

Originally posted by: rahvin
Although reliance on computers is a problem the first phrase you learn in engineering school is "garbage in, garbage out". If you have any idea what that means you will understand what I'm saying.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. And I'm saying that reliance on computers allows people to put that garbage in. People that otherwise would never make it as an engineer can now do the job if they know Autocad, for example. My point is that the people now don't seem to fully be able to undestand what they're doing. They're so far removed from the work they're doing that common sense gets lost in the process.

Originally posted by: rahvin
The only thing stopping engineering from accomplishing anything you can imagine is the limitation on resources. In the case of traveling to the moon, this nation could build a moon base next year if we were willing to spend 2 trillion dollars on it. In 1960's dollars the US spent 300 billion dollars going to the moon for 10 minutes. Inflation adjusted that dollar figure would be in the trillions today.

Think.

You're telling *me* to think, yet you're trying to act like you're smart, trying to pull a fast on on me by pulling imaginary figures out of your a$$. It didn't cost 300 billion dollars for the Apollo program. Not even close. You just fabricated some "facts".

I can either believe you, or I can believe NASA:

Total cost of Apollo program

"After the last lunar landing, total funding for the Apollo program was about $19,408,134,000. The budget allocation was 34 percent of the NASA budget."

19.4 billion is MUCH less than 300 billion. Today, that would cost about $130 billion, NOT "in the trillions".

NASA's chief Dr. Griffin stated that, adjusted for inflation, NASA's budget today is not much different than it was during the Apollo era. He said that the funding NASA recieved in the last 16 years is very similar to what they received in the first 16 years. So money isn't holding us back. But what would he know, he's only NASA's chief.

Think.

Actually NASA's budget at it's peak spending (when the infrastructure for the Apollo missions was being set up) was double of what it is now. Once the Apollo missions were over with, NASA's budget was slashed in half. Since then it has pretty much remained the same.

 

[rahvin]

To stick in a reply to a long ago posted comment. When I was in school we learned working stress and they were just talking about LRFD. And the working stress designs we did were FS=3. I realize that under LRFD that factor might not be quite three, but at least in my business (highways) it's pretty damn close.