CVEN90024: High Rise Structures

The first assignment is essentially a finite element modelling exercise. This will be a breeze for anyone with some background in Strand7 or similar programs, but if you’re completely new to this area it can be a little confusing. The interpretation of results is probably the most difficult part.

But the remaining assessment is booked as one continual project (with splayed due dates) that has you come up with a conceptual design of a high rise building. This project is split into four parts: the first sees you design a floor system (i.e. beams, slabs and columns) for a high rise and calculate the gravity loading; the second exercise has you calculate the lateral load resisting capacity of a given LLRSS configuration; the third has you calculate wind and earthquake loading based on AS1170.2 and AS1170.4; and the final involves modelling this LLRSS in ol’ mate Space Gass and monitoring the lateral deflection of your building under the aforementioned wind loading.

This project is probably the best part of the subject. Each of the components is done individually, so your building is kind of your baby. Unfortunately, the design configuration is quite constrained and you aren’t given much creative freedom, but its a good project nonetheless and by the end of it you’ll really feel like you’ve achieved something. Oh and most people I know got good marks for that assignment, so that’s another bonus.

It was only after I got my mark and viewed my exam for this subject that a firm attitude of ambivalence towards High Rise set in. I guess that’s why it’s taken me 4 months to write a review – I still really don’t know what I think about it.

Overall, it might be the most interesting subject I’ve done from the engineering faculty at the UoM. But this is probably more due to my personal biases than anything else – high rise building design is a field I’d love to end up working in.

So why the mixed feelings? Well, it’s the subject that broke my H1 streak, and it did so when I expected it to be my best subject of the semester. It actually ended up being the worst I’ve done on an exam since undergrad maths. I feel like a whiney and juvenile twat writing that but there you go.

I think in most other cases I wouldn’t harbour any sort of grudge for a subject that I got a H2A in. That’s obviously a more than respectable mark and one that I’d generally be happy with. But I had a chance to review my exam paper for this one, and found a few points where I really didn’t understand why I had lost marks. And after submitting a few questions to the subject coordinator about this, I never got a response. Hence disgruntlement.

But I’ll try to keep the rest of the review as if I had written it before I had got my result or seen my exam. Overall it’s going to be pretty positive.

While I don’t believe it is a hurdle, the exam for High Rise is worth 70% of your final mark. It’s a 3 hour exam, and while it’s not stupidly long like this year’s Structural Theory and Design 2 one was (which I believe was written by Leonard Cohen), there’s still quite a lot to get through.

Luckily, it’s also an exam that is quite easy to study for. The notes that I mentioned earlier have most of the answers within them somewhere, the calculation based questions aren’t that hard, and your pretty much told which topics are going to be on there and how many marks they are allocated prior to the exam.

But like I said in the outset, this was the worst I’ve done on an exam for quite a while, and though I think I was the victim of some harsh marking, I still don’t fully know why I struggled with it. But, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Yes

Mainly Priyan Mendis, but also Tuan Ngo, Massoud Sofi and a couple of guests

I can never tell if Priyan Mendis is a good lecturer or not. He’s a good guy, for sure. And he’s got a whole bunch of experience and a whole bunch of valuable insight within the field of high rise buildings. But he often seems ill prepared to actually give a lecture. He’s the sort of guy that will post the entire semester’s lecture slides before week 1, and sometimes I don’t think he’s looked at them again since the last time he gave that lecture. This results in a whole bunch of jumping around slides, chopping and changing, and it makes his lectures quite stilted and stultifying.

Luckily, he also posts written notes for each topic of the subject, which generally go into a solid amount of depth yet remain concise and cogent. Using these is by far the best way to learn the content of the course, and it makes the lectures somewhat superfluous at times.

I should probably mention some of the topics that are covered while I’m at it. High rise buildings encapsulate just about the entire field of structural engineering, so there’s obviously a pretty large pool from which to fish out the content for this subject. Some of the more important things you’ll learn is stuff like how tall buildings resist lateral loads (i.e. wind and earthquake loads). You’ll also learn how to calculate those lateral loads in accordance with Australian standards, and you’ll learn about calculating design/gravity loads on high rises and how they are resisted. These are areas full of innovation and constant development, so it can be pretty interesting. You’ll also learn some stuff about facades, frames, foundations, and fires (and other things that start with f), and get an introduction to finite element analysis (with the program Strand7), which unfortunately isn’t particularly well taught.

I think I’ve gone through this entire review without mentioning that this subject is an elective, an optional subject for Civil and Structural majors. So overall, I think it’s a subject that I’d recommend for Structural majors, whether they are interested in tall building design or not. It’s a subject that pulls a lot of the facets of structural design together, and through the main assignment it puts them into a practical context. But the subject could be improved with better quality teaching and a more open line of communication between staff and students.

Yes

3.5/5

None required

I actually can’t remember, but there’s 36 hours of lectures all up plus a few computer lab sessions

Semester 1, 2015

H2A