Game on!

For those who may not have heard, Indianapolis has been chosen to host the 2012 NFL Superbowl. This is a major accomplishment for the city and its representatives, as it beat out tough competition from perennial favorites from Texas and Arizona. It's not quite as important as hosting an Olympic games, but it is a great honor. The city is now forced to hold itself up to a mirror and determine how it will manage such a monumental feat.

You can find the superbowl committee website here. The successful Superbowl bid was based largely on two key points - the new stadium and its proximity to downtown. The new Lucas Oil Stadium is a magnificent project, I hope they keep it in the city forever. I'll talk about the stadium at length in a later post, I'll stick to the city's bid and Indy downtown for now.

To be frank, the Indianapolis downtown isn't in such a great position. Surely, the local residents here are quite fond of it but it can't quite compete with the historic downtown of Cleveland, nor can it match the modern skyline of Chicago. I wouldn't even accuse it of "doing the best it can with what it has". But now is the time to prove me wrong. Game on indeed... I think the main event is not the superbowl but whether Indy can meet its boast of being a "world-class city".

The downtown has some notable attractions, including a great mixed car/pedestrian space in the circle. This more than anything else gives the city a claim to being "world-class". By establishing pedestrian and bike paths radiating from this center, the city is really making a good play. The superbowl bid concept is to create a "superbowl village", which should be a lot of fun. I am sure there will be enough public and private funding to make this a reality, and if we get mother nature to cooperate then it will be very successful. I am interested in seeing if the superbowl bid attracts more private development, but even if only encourages the current projects to progress I would be happy. There's a lot on the slate right now, and I think a lot of them are actually pretty good.

One of the best benefits for the city is the new practice center. This facility will be located on the Arsenal Tech high school campus, and will be donated to IPS when the superbowl has concluded. The public school system here really does need all the help it can get, and providing a rallying point for the Near Eastside community is a sign that the city leaders do care what happens on the other side of the great interstate divide.

7.9M Earthquake in China

There was an earthquake in China on Monday. A 7.9 Magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province, to be more specific. Unlike my comments on the midwest earthquake earlier this year, this was not a good event. It was horrendous. We get earthquakes like this a few times a year throughout the world, but a lot of times they won't hit near a populated area. This one really hurt a lot of people. Here is a BBC website showing the affected area in detail.

There are a lot of photos and videos available on the web or youtube dealing with people who had video rolling during the event. Probably the most dramatic was this series of still images on the BBC website taken by a wedding photographer. First one here shows the lovely church in the background. The next one shows the church after the earthquake.

A large earthquake can cause absolute devastation. Destroying the infrastructure of an entire region. Hospitals are closed, no power or communications, no gasoline, no passable roadways, and nowhere to sleep with a roof overhead. Shakemap below from USGS shows a very high shaking intensity.

The human impact from the earthquake included 50,000-80,000 expected casualties, 5 Million people homeless, and a complete breakdown of infrastructure. China is well positioned to absorb the collateral costs, but there will be a lot of questions to answer. The first is why so many schools collapsed. You usually expect a public building funded by the government will meet very high safety standards. That did not appear to be the case, and it may be a result of regional construction methods, improper design, or outright fraud by construction officials.

The larger public policy issues will also need to be addressed:

1. whether existing buildings in China are safe at all - this is especially important for the olympics


2. whether China's current building codes correctly address the safety requirements for public buildings and schools


3. whether China's enforced low-pay rates have encouraged third-world construction methods and outright corruption in a modern country


4. once buildings are verified to be safe, what about the infrastructure

One of the main problems with the relief effort was gauging what response is needed. China appears to be taking the kitchen sink approach, and I think that is wise. They are center place on the world stage right now, no time to ignore a major disaster like the Myanmar cyclone response. They are limiting free access to the affected area, but there seems to be enough information getting out to the other cities so that it's not really an issue. I think that by this point people have a good idea of how many people have been affected, now it is just an issue of getting relief efforts there.

The roadways have been destroyed by earth movements, landslides, and similar problems. You can't just drive in and deliver supplies, especially to the remote villages. Now there is a concern that the earthquake and aftershocks have weakened the reservoir dams in the area. I'm sure a massive flood would add a lot of misery to the region, so let us hope that the dams hold. The worst hit city also has a landslide blocking a river, so flooding is now an issue for the epicenter.

Temporary housing is a huge concern for any major disaster. How would any regional government accomodate 5,000,000 homeless citizens? The challenge is monumental. Any permanent or even short-term structures must be built to the highest standards because of the risk that after-shocks present. To underscore this fact, the Chinese government is rejecting all offers of assistance from foreign countries, except tents. Most of the towns in the area have now become tent-cities. The larger cities have increased in size as refugees from smaller cities come looking for food and shelter.

These issues of temporary housing, disease/death, and collapse of economic activity are common to most disasters. The 2008 7.9M EQ in China was similar to the 1906 San Francisco 8.0M EQ. Compare the historic photos of San Francisco with those coming from the earthquake in China.

Szichuan, 2008

San Francisco, 1906

Here are photos of some of the rescue efforts. Here is a powerpoint presentation written for the Katrina recovery effort based on previous earthquake disasters. It's well done and has some great information regarding disaster preparedness and relief efforts.

Governmental response can't save everyone after an emergency. But the government response can rescue a lot of people and facilitate a return to normal life. Successful disaster response must be planned well ahead of time. If you are concerned about disaster response in your community you should be doing two things - first make sure you have a short-term and long-term plan for your family, and second write all your local politicians and let them know how you feel, as that will help them allocate resources to what people think is important.

Bamboo Reinforced Concrete

Bamboo is a grass. That's a hard concept for me because some bamboo stalks are 40 feet tall. Bamboo is also composed of many different species in different countries. Some are short, some are tall. Some green, some black, some other colors as well. Pandas eat it. Bamboo is great stuff, apparently.

So imagine you are building a flagpole 40 feet tall. You will have a lot of bending forces at your base. You would want to use a material that had high compressive and tensile strength to meet the moment requirement. You would want to make sure that you could resist the wind from any direction. Nature already took a look at the problem and came up with bamboo.

We can use bamboo in all kinds of applications that mother nature didn't intend, like tension reinforcing in concrete beams. It even has ridges on the outside that prevent bond slip. It's extremely high tensile strength can rival conventional steel reinforcing. For anyone looking to lower the cost of their steel reinforcing budget, bamboo might be a good alternative.

Now for the issues...
1) you still need to tie it up, so labor costs remain high
2) it's not code approved for reinforced concrete, so you'll have to design as unreinforced
3) it's quite expensive if supplies are short in your region
4) you'll need to keep it dry and insect free

But hey, if you are looking for an alternative and green building material, I think combining bamboo reinforcing with other proven options like ICF construction, high fly ash content concrete, and other bamboo/sustainable products throughout would gain a lot of respect in the design world. Bamboo reinforcing is completely accepted in certain parts of Asia, so there is a lot of information about it already. See this for a very well done thesis by Leena Khare at UTA regarding bamboo reinforcing, with test data. See this for other examples of natural fiber reinforcement.

Now, bamboo is getting a lot of good press right now because of it's environmentally friendly properties. It grows superfast and can generally replace any conventional building material, as long as it stays dry and insect free. But be careful if you are considering using bamboo that you only select sustainably farmed products, because we don't want to lose more panda habitat.

Resource Management in Engineering

Call it sustainable, eco-friendly, environmentally conscious, or green design... it's really about managing resources. It is the future of all construction trades, and it means a great deal to our clients. So what is green design, how would it apply to engineers, and why is it important?


Green design basically means that you will purposefully choose options that will reduce consumption in the long term. When you consider the full life cycle of the structure, there is a lot of energy that goes into the building during construction, and a small input of energy throughout it's useful design life. A significant amount of energy can be also be spent during demolition, or the building can be "deconstructed" and recycled. See LEED guidelines published by the US Green Building Council for good tips.


Structural engineers usually have a hard time with the green design metrics. Concrete is cheap, you can throw in recycled content like fly ash, and it lasts basically forever. Structural steel is almost 90% recycled content, and can be optimized so that only a small amount of material is used for a structure. Wood grows on trees - it removes CO2 from the atmosphere and is pretty darn good stuff. As long as you aren't using dead pandas as building materials, green design is pretty much a slam dunk for us engineers, right?


Well, not quite. Optimizing the structural system won't amount to much in the end. If you are really concerned about green design, the most important contribution you can make is to help the other design team members meet their goals. Have you done everything possible to help the HVAC designer? Have you eliminated the need for maintenance of the facade? Have you specified low VOC content in your steel paint/primer? Have you maximized your column spacing based on discussions with the architect, and therefore removed 1/3 of your column footings? Have you begun using LRFD and listing all your reactions on the design documents? Have you notated all your design data on the construction documents so that future engineers can renovate and update your building's structure without having to re-invent the wheel?

If you are working on a project where green design is a priority, I would suggest you go beyond the LEED guidelines and reach out to the other design team members. Communication is the key to this. Make sure everyone knows you are there to support their work, and that whatever they feel will best contribute to the green-ness of the building is what you want. Maybe request an extra coordination meeting with the architect, or ask that the HVAC and interior design/lighting, etc. work be substantially complete before a structural system is chosen. This would upset the normal design flow, but it would put the green design priorities in the right order.

So why is green design important? It comes down to environmental impact and economics. For a long time (the last 100,000 years or so) the human impact on our environment was not really well understood. The true cost of altering our own environment was hidden. Now the cost is being priced into everything we will buy and every bit of energy required to operate a building. Simply put, conventional design is going to get too expensive. That's the bottom line.

The other reasons for green design may or may not appeal to you, but are certainly important to me. I believe that engineers have an ethical obligation to protect the welfare of the public. If my structure causes excess CO2 to be produced, thus indirectly causing famine elsewhere in the world due to climate change, I can't say I've done my best to protect the public. If you are uncomfortable with the topic of climate change, here is a good primer.


There are simple ways you can reduce the initial "embodied energy" of your structure, but there is so much more you can do to help out the green design of your structure. Not coincidentally, these options will usually reduce the bottom line of the project, thus saving your client money. We are always pressed for time in a design environment, and often the client is enforcing difficult completion deadlines. It's hard to optimize the structure for cost, safety, and green design and still meet industry minimum profit margins. However, I'm sure that if you set it as a priority, you can accomplish it.