Monday, March 16, 2015

Today, in an attempt to change tack (later halted), I did some research on skyscrapers and their various designs. Surprisingly, for all the diversity that modern skyscrapers show in their outside appearances, each employs one or two of just a handful of structural techniques to hold it aloft. Also interestingly, the most significant force on a large building's structure is not the live load (the furniture, people, and other objects that can be placed and moved around inside a building), not the dead load (the structural components of the building itself, and the load they place on themselves) but the horizontal shear caused by the force of wind against the sides of the building. This presents an interesting and unique challenge to architects and structural engineers who design skyscrapers - it means that they have to create structures that are even more horizontally stable than vertically stable. I learned a lot more, but that's enough for today.