1. Domes - You are a construction manager in the UAE in charge of a project that involves constructing domes. Discuss briefly, giving examples, a range of different types of dome constructions and their merits. Explain the tension and compression load paths through the meridians and parallels of a dome and issues that relate to wind and other loadings that can lead to their collapse.
2. Redundancy - Roof structures such as space trusses are subject to wind and water loads in addition to permanent loads. Explain the concept of redundancy in relation to load paths and how this can ensure structural integrity in the event of failure of some members. You may refer to specific example(s) to illustrate your answer.
3. BurjKhalifa (formerly Burj Dubai) - Wind action places enormous stresses on tall buildings. Discuss how the design of this structure minimises the impact of wind actions on the structure.
4. Structural damage - Explosions of inbuilt gas tanks, cisterns, heating furnaces, and other building components can cause catastrophic and unforseen damage. Discuss the cause and the resulting structural damage caused in the Ronan Point Tower explosion in 1968 or the 1978 explosion in a 24 story building on 45th street New York. In your presentation provide some design considerations that would have mitigated or reduced the structural damage had they been incorporated in the construction.
5. Taipai 101 - This building in Taipai is built on substandard soil and needs to resist earthquake and typhoon loads. Explain how the foundation design deals with the substandard soil issues, and the design features of the building that are intended to allow the building to resist earthquake loads and typhoon wind loads.
6. World Trade Centre - Discuss and explain the failure mechanism of the World Trade Centre collapse that occurred after the impact of the planes on Sept 11 2001.
7. Hyatt Regency - Discuss and explain how structural design changes during construction caused the Hyatt Regency, St Louis, atrium disaster in 1981.
8. Resonate vibrations - These can cause a structure to fail, particularly in bridges subject to wind loadings. Using your choice of an example of a bridge that failed as a result of reinforcing resonating vibrations, explain how the failure occurred and what could / should have been incorporated in the design to prevent the failure.
9. Simply Supported Reinforced Concrete Beams - Explain the purpose and amount of reinforcing in concrete beams in relation to bending and shear and the concepts of under reinforcement, balanced reinforcement and over reinforcement. Explain also the reason for ensuring ductility in beams, and the purpose of ensuring that the proportion of tensile steel to the cross sectional area of the beam falls between a minimum and a maximum value.
10. On 4 Jul 2009 a 13-storey residential building under construction in Shanghai collapsed. Explain the reasons for this collapse and with the benefit of hindsight, describe how an observant project manager should have foreseen the possibility of this failure from the construction processes that were occurring immediately preceding the collapse.
11. Explain the design principles that need to be considered and incorporated in the design of the footing of, say, a two metre high reinforced concrete retaining wall where the wall is on a boundary alignment, where significant sliding forces are known to exist and where significant water seepage is known to exist.
12. Describe and explain the purpose of allowing for pre-cambering of long roof and floor beams and discuss the criteria that would be applied for determining the amount of pre-camber.