Year: 2021
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: In professional practice, a necessary initial step to any structural engineering project is to establish loading criteria for the given conditions.Once this is established, an engineer is expected to have a fundamental understanding of how the structure responds or is designed to respond to these loadings.As such, architectural engineering programs have an obligation to teach the skill set of load determination, application, and analysis within their curriculum.Fortunately, most jurisdictions in the United States have adopted the International Building Code [1] and thus ASCE 7 (American Society of Civil Engineering, Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures [2]).Based on this adoption, the ASCE 7 code is the natural choice to use for the determination of loadings within a course that focuses on the topic of structural loadings.However, teaching code procedures alone are not sufficient to gain an understanding of how structures behave due to given loadings.Beyond the obligation to teach code, architectural engineering programs should help students develop the skills to understand structural systems, behaviors, and load paths.This paper describes the development of a required Structural Loadings class for undergraduate architectural engineering students.The class described aims to not only teach how to determine structural loading, but also to give an understanding of load application and load behavior within structural systems.Within the course, which is designed to be taken in the third year of a four-and-a-half-year bachelor's degree program, students cover loading topics such as tributary area, framing layout, load distribution, structural diaphragms, and lateral systems.A literary search is included to examine the research on this topic in similarly formatted courses.Additionally, it will describe how the course is integrated into the curriculum, will present the course outline and topics covered, and will discuss loading topics that were omitted in the interest to prioritize more essential knowledge.For assessment of the course, student survey feedback and instructor observations are used to evaluate the success of the teaching strategies for the initial offering of this course.
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--36963
Authors: Christina McCoy, John Phillips, Carisa Ramming, Charlotte Guyer
Institutions: Oklahoma State University, University of Cincinnati
Language: English
Subfield: Media Technology
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3189313859