Good morning! This is Back of the Envelope – the place to learn structural engineering in tiny bites 🍪. In today’s article, I will talk about how to do a quick-n-dirty preliminary check to make sure your composite steel deck meets the fire rating requirement. This is something that confuses me almost all the time… […]
P-delta diverging error was literally crushing my soul
Good morning. Andy here from Back of the Envelope — the place to be for all your p-delta soul-crushing info. Just kidding. No but seriously. Over the weekend, as I was working on a RISA Floor/3d model for a looming deadline, I repeatedly ran into the dreaded “P-delta diverging” error. It drove me crazy. So today, I […]
Steel: Required Strength vs. Nominal Strength vs. Allowable Strength vs. Design Strength
Steel is actually one of my favorite structural materials. For some reason, the design outlined by AISC just seems much more straightforward compared to other materials (e.g. concrete). Perhaps I just had a really good professor in college… (thanks Professor Uang!) Anyways, if you are planning to take the PE or the SE but have […]