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Technical English - II 2nd week

Civil Engineering Branches

Civil engineering is the business of designing, building and maintaining structures with the aim of easing life of the human race on earth. One may imagine the suffering that we would experience without achievements of civil engineers.

Waterways, dams, irrigation channels, buildings, airports, harbors, highways are all designed and built by civil engineers.

The diversity of the structures and techniques that are utilized in the construction of that many types of structures inevitably require existence of sub-disciplines within the profession. Such sub-disciplines may also be called as «branches».

Geotechnical, transportation, hydraulic and structural engineering are traditionally considered as main branches of civil engineering. They all require separate design and construction practices.

Scope of Civil Engineering Profession

Past engineers were usually genious persons who had creations in various areas. Although modern calculus was not known in their ages, they somehow managed to pose very interesting and challenging designs. Basic physics and geometric principles were widely used by them.

Mimar Sinan

Leonardo da Vinci

The civil engineer of the modern age develops solutions to the complex technical problems of the society with the knowledge of physics, mathematics and chemistry.

Atatürk Dam

The Third International İstanbul Airport

Safir Kule

Osman Gazi Bay Bridge

airport / earth dam / suspension bridge / sky scraper

Although engineering tools have changed dramatically since the times of da Vinci and Mimar Sinan, inventive thought, however, remained as the sole unchanged fundamental skill of bright civil engineers.

The Control Tower of the Third Airport

Viscous and base isolation (friction) dampers to increase earthquake performance of buildings.

inventive thought / viscous damper / friction damper / base isolation

Hydraulic Engineering

Early civilizations developed many hydraulic systems and built many canals and dams for irrigating crops, draining swamps, and water supply.

civilization / canal / dam / irrigation / draining / swamp / water supply / shaft / mother well / channel / tunnel / water table / alluvium / qanal shaft

We, as members of modern time civilizations, still work on water supply and management. This has attained importance more than ever with global warming, which threatens water resources especially in warmer regions of the world.

Şanlıurfa-Suruç Irrigation Tunnels

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Construction of a Breakwater to protect a fishery

The coastal engineering is a sub branch of hydraulic engineering. It deals with the design and construction of coastal structures such as shore protection members, breakwaters, piers, and harbors.

A concrete seawall to protect the shoreline from damaging effects of high waves.

Shoreline protection by means of rip-rap cover.

coastal / shoreline / shore protection / breakwater / pier / harbor / rip-rap cover

Typical cross section of a erosion protection along shoreline.

A detached breakwater system at Bay Ridge on Chesapeake Bay in November 2002. Definition sketch of beach morphology of tombolo and salient as they relate to offshore breakwaters.

overtopping apron / storm wave / armor layer / geotextile fabric / graded stone / toe protection / graded stone filter / incident wave crest / tombolo / salient / gap

A piled pier for recreational purposes

A piled wharf for cargo handling

Pile driving at a wharf construction project

piled pier / wharf / pile driving / dock / quay

Structural Engineering Structural engineers deal with structural systems that refers to a

system of connected parts used to support a load. Important examples related to civil engineering include buildings, bridges, and towers. When designing a structure to serve a specified function for public use, the engineer must account for its safety, esthetics, and serviceability, while taking into consideration economic and environmental constraints.

Kayseri Stadium, an esthetic structure with special hinge supports at the base of steel frames.

esthetic / serviceability / hinge support

Structural engineers design and construct both steel and reinforced concrete buildings. Demanding architectural designs require complex analysis and design procedures that account for material and geometric nonlinearities.

demanding architectural design / material and geometric nonlinearity

Karakaya arched gravity dam and power plant with 1,800 MW capacity

Double-arched Yusufeli Dam

Structural analysis and design of reinforced concrete arched dams are also made by structural engineers who must co-operate with mechanical and electrical engineers in order to fullfill their needs.

arched gravity dam / fullfill / double-arched

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Engineers who work on civil engineering materials are usually considered as members of structural engineering group. In our country, however, «materials» is a separate research and teaching sub-discipline.

Materials engineers especially conduct research on mechanical properties of new concrete types including influence of additives and fibers on stress-strain behavior of concrete.

fiber reinforced concrete

The development of a novel smart transparent concrete using plastic optical fiber (POF) and Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) is a transparent and smart sensing new material in civil engineering.

transparent concrete with POF and FBG

fiber reinforced concrete / additive / plastic optical fiber / fiber bragg grating

The experimental results show that an optical fiber can be easily combined with concrete and that the POF could provide a steady light transmitting ratio. Moreover, the FBG can be used as a sensing element for strain and temperature. Because the smart transparent concrete can be regarded as a “green” energy saving construction material and as a smart intrinsic sensor for long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), it is a promising technology for field applications in civil infrastructure.

A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is a type of distributed Bragg reflector constructed in a short segment of optical fiber that reflects particular wavelengths of light and transmits all others.

Addition of fibers into concrete mix greatly enhances its mechanical properties. This is especially true for impact strength.

transparent / reflector / green energy saving construction material / intrinsic sensor / structural health monitoring / infrastructure

Continous monitoring of major civil engineering structures such as bridges, tunnels, pipelines and tall buildings has become part of the design and management process in order to assess performance and condition of such structures following earthquakes and tornadoes, etc. This is called as structural health monitoring (SHM). Data evaluation along with back analysis of the structures is usually made by structural engineers.

continuous monitoring / assess / data evaluation / structural health

Transportation Engineering

Transportation Engineering may be defined as the branch of engineering which applies technology, science, and human factors to the planning, design, operations and management of roads, streets, bikeways, highways, their networks, terminals, and abutting lands. The objective is to provide for the safe, rapid, comfortable, efficient, convenient, and environmentally compatible movement of people, goods, and services.

bikeway / network / terminal / abutting land / good

Pavement design, traffic planning and prediction, railway, highway and airport design are made by transportation engineers.

Computer simulations are made in order to analyze performance of a proposed highway junction before giving final decision.

Conceptual design of a roundabout.

Performance of rotaries and roundabouts are compared with each other for a particular location.

highway junction / roundabout / rotary / pavement design

Cross-sections of roads and highways are determined by transportation engineers including pavement and underlying layers.

shoulder / travel lane / rain garden / subgrade / foundation / base course / batter

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clearing limit / property / ditch / road bed / natural soil / base course / batter / wear

natural soil level

subgrade

subbase

subfoundation

foundation

bituminous foundation

foundation level

shoulder

binder

wear layer

Image processing has become part of daily traffic management and safety operations.

Airport terminals, plane runways are planned by transportation engineers. Design and testing of a runway pavement with its infrastructure were also made by the same group of people. The software and electronic equipment necessary to track the airplanes, on the other hand, are made by electronic engineers and computer scientists.

native soil / subgrade / paved shoulder / subbase course / base course / surface course / drainage pipe / wheel load / load distribution pattern / large scale pavement testing system

railway / train station / high speed train railroad tracks / rails

Geotechnical Engineering

Regardless of the type of the structure being designed, each and everyone of them must transfer their loads by means of adequate foundation systems. Analysis, design, construction of foundation systems are made by geotechnical engineers. Lateral load bearing structures that are in contact with soil and/or rock are also subject to the attention of geotechnical engineers. A sound understanding of soil stress-strain behavior and foundation-soil interaction is needed for competent geotechnical engineering practice. I tricked on the foundation a little bit

but no one will notice.

foundation / lateral load bearing / to be in contact with / geotechnical

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-No comment-

settlement / tilt / time dependent settlement / consolidation / overturning moment

Foundation Types

Shallow Foundations

Footing

Combined footing

Strip foundation

Continuous foundation

Single direction

Double direction

Raft (mat) foundation

Floating foundation

Deep foundations

Pile foundation

Caisson

shallow foundation / footing / combined / raft / pile / caisson

offshore wind turbine foundations

bored pile foundations

pile foundations for tall buildings

Footings are preferred in foundation systems of industrial buildings. Large span lengths usually prohibit use of strip or raft foundations.

A special type of footing is the socket foundation into which prefabricated reinforced column of an industrial building is carefully installed and fixed.

Socket Foundation

Footings must be interconnected by means of connecting beams in order to keep integrity of the foundations and the superstructure under lateral loading conditions such as earthquakes or winds.

Axially symmetric rigid foundations are utilized for wind turbines that are constructed on land. This is necessary since lateral load and overturning moment direction changes depending on gust direction.

If single footings come too close to each other due to architectural constraints or heavy column loads, they may be combined together by means of load bearing beams to generate continuous foundations.

If total area of single footings and/or continous foundation beams in seating area of a building raft foundation usually becomes the preferred solution since placement of reinforcement and concrete cast would be much easier in this case.

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slab beam type raft plain raft

plate raft with pedestals

Depending on loads that are beared there are three major types of raft foundations.

Piles by-pass surficial layers that are not stiff enough and transfer loads to deeper soils layers. Length and diameter of the pile is decided upon soil characteristics and structural loads. Pile construction technique, which is utilized in the field, however, is based on local availability as well as demanded pile length and diameter. There three major pile construction techniques: bored, driven and driven cast-in-place.

bored pile with reinforcement cage lowered inside the pile borehole before concrete cast by means of the Tremie pipe.

Driven cast-in-place piles are constructed using vibro hammers. Sometimes rams may be used instead of vibro hammers. Driven piles (could be made of RC, steel or wood) are always constructed using pile driving rams.

CFA pile «continous flight auger pile»