Blog 21: Mentorship

Literal

Link is on the side of my blog labeled mentorship log hours under the heading mentorship.

Contact Name: Tzouh-Jaw Wu
Mentorship Place: Kanda and Tso Consulting Structural Engineers

Interpretive

What is the most important thing you gained from this experience and why?

The experience I gained most from this mentorship was my design in AutoCAD. I do want to purse an engineering career in the future so having a first hand experience with AutoCAD helps be better with a program that I will definitely use in the future. The AutoCAD is extremely cool (although it's not the most updated version), showing how buildings and structures are shaped on paper before it's being built on the ground. This experience also showed me how difficult AutoCAD can be during an engineer's career. There are still many applications that I still need to learn on AutoCAD, or at least I haven't learned the faster methods in drawing structures. Most of the engineers at my mentorship used AutoCAD and used it to communicate with other engineers, which I didn't know until I went to this mentorship.

Applied

How has what you've done helped you to answer your EQ? Please explain.

Most of my mentorship included my time on AutoCAD, designing structures. This was really helped me answer my EQ because it gave me a better foundation leading to my current three answers. My topic, structural engineering, is a complex topic, so having better foundation was really important. For example, my answer 1 focused on particular structure, which came from my AutoCAD work during my mentorship. My mentorship also gave me connections with a lot of engineers that helped give me the ideas to my answers or helped clarify my answers. For example, I was researching seismic analysis and I came across equivalent static analysis. During my interviews, I asked questions regarding equivalent static analysis and was given responses on how this analysis measures a building's acceleration with an earthquake's load. After being given solid information, I then proceeded to make anlaysis as part of my second answer towards my EQ.

Overall, mentorship has given me a hands one experience on the design aspect, AutoCAD, which helped gave me a better foundation on how structures were used for earthquake resistance. This foundation helped inspire me to research other ideas for my answers to my EQ. My mentorship also gave me many important resources by providing lots of professional engineers at my mentorship. These engineers helped me gain many primary sources for my answers, but more clarity on the information of my answers.

January Post: Grade Beam Detail

Recently, I've been working on more cross sections of structures. The drawings below shows the inner layers of a grade beam and grade slab. In drawing A, the grade beam is connected to the grade slab with reinforcements such as rebars and bolts. What are rebars you may ask? Rebars are a bundle of steel bars in a pattern linear formation. The rebars, in detail D, are located between the bolts inside the grade beam, supporting the load coming from the grade slab. 

I drew this structure a long time ago and showed it during my lesson 1 presentation. This blog post is focused on a portion of this structure, which is located (in this drawing) on D.

 This is the process of me finishing Grade Beam Detail (D).

This is my finished work of Detail D.

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 Hours

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

I'm doing my mentorship at Kanda and Tso.

2.   Who is your contact?

My contact is my mentor Tzuoh-Jaw Wu.

3.   How many total hours have you done (total hours should be reflected in your mentorship log located on the right hand side of your blog like your WB)?   

So far I have completed 39 hours of my mentorship.

4.   Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.

I focused on sketching detailed parts of the SMRF system. These parts are the column base detail, panel zone, and the grade beam. Most of the details I had to sketch within these parts involved labeling, adding bolts to specific structures, indicating welding, and indicating flanges.

5.   Email your house teacher the name of your contact and their phone number confirming who they should call to verify it. 

Ok

Pad Footings

Recently, I've been working on footings during my mentorship. Footings are the foundations of a structure or building (basically holds the structure/building in place). One type of footing that I've been working on is the pad footing. Pad footings are designed to be embedded in the soil, transferring the buildings' load to the soil. Pad footings are usually placed below a gradient beam, made of concrete, and is connected with column that goes through the gradient beam. This can all be seen in the picture below.

Also, on one of my previous posts, I had to redo the panel zone, since my mentor made some changes to make the drawings simpler for me to draw. This can be seen on the picture below.

Manuals for Building Element Measurements

During my mentorship, I've been starting to use more books to help me calculate building elements. Most engineers can't remember every scale or measurement for every single building element. There are too many components for each type of building element for a single engineer to memorize. These components can be weight, height, depth, thickness, dimensions, etc. Recently, I've been studying more on a building element called Wide Flanges. Wide Flanges help stabilize beams and also let the beams expand their limber properties. To find the measurements to find the weight capacity of the beams, I have to consider these wide flanges in the equation. This book (on the bottom) helps not only give me the measurements for different sizes of Wide Flanges, but also for all steel building elements.

On the top left hand corner of this page there's a picture that's in a shape of an I. That picture is an example of a Wide Flange. This page also shows an example of what measurements structural engineers have to look for during their work hours.

Panel Zone

This is a close up of the panel zone. Basically, the panel zone is purposely used to weaken the upper beam of the SMRF (Special Moment Restrain Frame). I mentioned this during my lesson 1 presentation, but not a close up view. In this perspective, it shows how the panel zone connects with the column and the SSDA beam (the upper beam). There's lots of welding within the steel between the column and the beam. Currently, I'm still trying to redraw this panel zone (it's the picture without any labels).

Roof Framing Design - Beam Calculation

My first assignment is to design a classroom of one story with steel framing. Before I start designing, there are a few tasks that I need to follow. Most of these tasks deal with calculating loads and the weight of building components. Today, I focused on the first task, which dealt with the roof frame design of the classroom.

These are duties I've been assigned to do during my mentorship

The small rectangular squares in the corners of the roof frame, represent the columns. These plans are not three dimensional because the view is above the roof frame. The unit measurements (between grid lines and A&B and 1-3) represents the spacing between the steel beams that will placed, horizontally, on top of the columns (this can be seen on the picture below).



This picture shows the measurements of each beam and the loads that impact the roof. The red squares represents the columns and the steel beams are the blue lines that have measurement W14X22. W is unit for the wide flange, which is the big hinges on the ends of the steel beams. The type of loads that affect the roof are dead loads and live loads. My mentor told me the measurements of each load and taught me how to calculate each load (it's also on this picture.)




This picture explains how to solve the amount of momentum that a typical steel beam can withstand. Since the loads are pushing down on the roof, the steel beams has it's own bending force resisting the dead loads and the live loads.

Summer Mentorship Component

Literal:  

1. (Know) Using google doc (drive) link a log of specific hours and a description of your duties 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvtFX3hRxacldFkyZkVVWFRhZzJvbmtEMzVDWFhZZ2c#gid=0

2. What is the contact name & number of where you volunteered?       

Kevin Chen. 909-594-3836. dHA and Calpec is where I volunteered.

3. (Need to know) What questions were raised because of the 10 hours of experience?  List them.     

Besides meetings and working in the office, what other things do engineers do?

Which engineering field is the most demanding?

What type of engineer do I want to be?

Which engineer field is more focused on design?

Interpretive

4. What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

The most important thing I learned from this experience is engineers (that design parts of buildings) check the work of the architects. I always believed that architects only designed the exterior of buildings, but they actually design the entire layout of the buildings. When I was asking my mentor about my confusion if I was drawing some building parts in the correct position, he told me that the engineers have to correct the architect's work because sometimes they don't know certain parts of buildings.

This is important for me because architects and engineers constantly work together on many building projects. This is also important because I'm not sure whether I want to pursue in architecture or engineering.

Applied
 
5. How did what you did help you choose a topic?  Please explain.

Mostly what I did in my mentorship was drafting the duct work of a building. The company that I was doing my mentorship is separated into two engineering departments: electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. My mentorship is in the mechanical engineering department, which is why my drafting was only related to mechanical engineering. So how did this help I chose a topic? I found that drafting parts for mechanical engineers was a little repetitive. I told my dad, who is a structure engineer, about this and he told me that in structure engineering, there more details to look at where as mechanical engineering is only focused on a few building parts. So I decided to choose structure engineering to see if this will spark my interest in the engineering filed.