Issue 1

A reinforced concrete office block of 7 storeys was recently damaged by IRA bomb attack. The bomb was placed on the first floor in an end bay and opposite to a staircase, and did considerable structural damage. The bay of first floor on which the bomb was placed was demolished and a hole was blown in the second floor slab above. This, together with damage to external columns, wall beam and solid end gable were all that might have been expected from the size of the bomb employed. However, and at first sight without explanation, large areas of the 6 in thick 'flat-slab' first floor were also damaged. In spite of the fact that these bays could have suffered only from secondary or reflected blast, deflexions of up to 8 in appeared in the middles of several of the 15 ft square bays.

A study of the detailed stress distribution in brickwork is essential for the proper understanding of the behaviour of this composite material. The authors are thus to be congratulated for their work in applying the finite element method of analysis to a brickwork disc under diametrical load, taking into account the non-homogeneous nature of the material.

Mr. D. W. Smith : I was delighted to read this paper. It has the unusual property of being based on a sound theoretical background combined with applicability to creative design and practicality of presentation. A paper of this sort coming out of a university has appeal to the practical man, and goes some way in bridging any dangerous gap which tends to build up between the academic and the practitioner; between theory and practice.

The 18 member nations that comprise FEANI (Fédération Européenne d'Associations Nationales d'lngénieurs) are: Austria; Belgium; Czechoslovakia; Denmark; Finland; France; West Germany; Greece; Ireland; Italy; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Norway; Portugal; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; and the United Kingdom.

The CEI Board's Moderators and Chief Examiners present the following report in the hope that it will be of help to prospective candidates and particularly to colleges who provide courses of preparation. From the performances of candidates in May 1971 too many are clearly ill-prepared for the examination or are incapable of reaching its standard.

This paper records an investigation info the structural behaviour of a reservoir wall, supported by buttresses curtailed at a low level. A finite difference analysis, supplemented by tests on perspex models, leads to a proposal for an economical design form, and design tables are presented for this. A.A. Wood and F.A.N. Al-Shawi

The ‘Stability’ report has taken some time to develop but the timing of its appearance has coincided with a period of very active re-thinking of our basic structural philosophy. In particular, it seems to form the third member of a trilogy which began with the Aims of Structural Design and has coincided with the issue of recommendations on Future Building Regulations.

Experimental data are presented showing the influence of reinforcement detailing on structural efficiency for half-joints, joggled splices in columns, flexural corners and in situ concrete beam-column joints. G. Somerville and H.P.J. Taylor

The paper presents a plastic method of design for plate girder webs which allows for the influence of flange rigidity upon the post buckled behaviour of webs. The design procedure which is based on a study of the behaviour of 40 plate girders tested by the authors, has been checked against other experimental data available in the technical press. Because the present design procedure allows for the influence of flange stiffness upon the post buckled behaviour of shear webs it is more accurate than existing design methods. K.C. Rockey and M. Skaloud