Understanding Structural Analysis

It is now the view of many experienced engineers that the newly qualified graduate will not have the opportunity that they did to develop a robust and reliable understanding of structural behaviour. That understanding was developed before the computer became universally available for structural analysis and design and was acquired through many hours of hand calculations in the design office.

That informal opportunity has almost disappeared and there is now a need for a formal approach to the development of these skills.

The first four chapters address the development of an understanding of structural behaviour and the remainder of the text shows how that understanding may be used to develop various methods of analysis.

The format of the book is unique in that the text is exactly matched by a coherent diagrammatic explanantion that serves to amplify, at each stage, the structural behaviour.

But without the computer many of our most impressive modern structures could not be built. This skill of understanding structural behaviour is the alphabet and grammar of an approach that will help the young engineer to arrive at an approximate analysis in order to size the structure and provide an external check on the results of computer analysis. The computer software included was developed by the author and will provide a valuable aid at various stages in the book.

This book is the bridge between the classical approach to the teaching of structural analysis and a design office that will rarely see the analysis of a structure by hand.