Help an ME teach himself basic reinforced concrete design

Hello there SE's!

This may sound insane, but hear me out. Some of you may know me on here, but for those who don't, I am a practicing environmental PE with an undergrad in mechanical engineering. As such, I was never educated in structural engineering, beyond engineering statics and mechanics of materials. So, yes, I am not worthy.

I've got an itch to try to learn something about reinforced concrete design - basically just enough to be comfortable with simple structures such as backup generator buildings or small-ish water tanks (or process tanks - same thing). Things I usually just ask someone else to design for me, or just use a standard detail.

It seems to me that the correct approach for me, based on civil engineering curricula I have researched, would be to first teach myself "structural analysis", and then reinforced concrete design. At some point in the process I would also need to try to replicate a soil mechanics course, and then foundation design?

Am I nuts? Is this advisable? What resources or approaches would any of you recommend?

Just so show that I have done a little homework, here are some resources I have found already, or am thinking about purchasing, to get started:

On-line Structural Analysis I course materials, University of Memphis

- along with Structural Analysis by Hibbeler, latest edition with full access to video solutions

On-line soil mechanics course materials, vulcanhammer.net

- based on free FHWA and Corps of Engineers pdf manuals

And then for reinforced concrete design, ??? I have found some course materials here and there (MIT, Memphis). Or do you advise just working my way through the sections of a textbook, say Nilson's Design of Concrete Structures, which is apparently based on the ACI 318 08 edition? Already out of date? Do I need to get my own copy of the ACI code, or do these textbooks incorporate enough of the code to be useful for my purposes?

Thanks in advance for any assistance - I am having severe withdrawals from recently completing my masters degree - like the post-PE restlessness thing but times 10 - so it's possible I may actually go through with at least some of this.

Dleg

Well, I'll answer a quick question and dive into this when I have a little more time.

Regarding the ACI code; you must get a copy. The ACI code is written very poorly but has very precise language that is definitely not reflected in text books. Plus, the commentary can be quite useful and ACI 318-11 and the upcoming ACI 318 are finally getting around to "fixing" some of the extreme unwieldy portions of the code. Actually, if you can wait for it, I would get the next code when it comes out later this year. The disadvantage of the new code is they moved a lot of things around. The intent was to avoid the problem ACI has (or had) where to design a member of a structure you would have to bounce around like 4 or 5 chapters. The new code is designed to address some of that. Thus, old references will probably still be valid but will likely refer to the wrong section number in ACI 318-14.

The other thing is be careful with what you get into. Structural engineering is probably the broadest of all the engineering disciplines. To successfully design a process tank may require multiple codes (like ACI 350 for example if it's a environmental tank), seismic designs, complex structural analysis, and so on. This is more than just learning a code, you're talking about learning an entire discipline. Not saying it can't be done, just saying don't expect this to be a few weeks of studying and buying a new code.

Dleg said:

I've got an itch to try to learn something about reinforced concrete design - basically just enough to be comfortable with simple structures such as backup generator buildings or small-ish water tanks (or process tanks - same thing). Things I usually just ask someone else to design for me, or just use a standard detail.

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Dleg, you are nuts... and admirable!

What is your ultimate goal? Do you want to be able to design something and sign/stamp the drawings yourself? Or do you just want to learn "enough" so that you have a rough idea what the engineers you hired are doing?

I think the answers to the above two questions I posed will greatly affect how you approach your study.

By the way, does anyone have pictures or sketches of "backup generator buildings" or "small-ish water tanks"? I have been practicing structural engineering and designing buildings for over 7 years and have never came across those... Are they constructed with concrete?

Dleg, I just want to quickly note that I'm not saying don't try to learn anything structural. PLEASE DO! I see plenty of ME's who try to do structure designs for things like motor supports and mezzanines and fail miserably. It's quite admirable to expand outside your field. (I've also seen SEs try to do ME work and fail as well.)

SEHQ is 100% correct about the two questions. How you want to use this knowledge really determines the direction you should go. My earlier post assumed you wanted to be stamping drawings, obviously this is vastly different from just "getting to know more about SE design".

SEHQ said:

By the way, does anyone have pictures or sketches of "backup generator buildings" or "small-ish water tanks"? I have been practicing structural engineering and designing buildings for over 7 years and have never came across those... Are they constructed with concrete?

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The above picture is a small precast concrete utility building I designed, this is probably what Dleg is referring to. I assume you don't do much industrial work SEHQ? We see small concrete tanks for industrial processes all the time. Usually tile lined or something similar.

Thanks so much for the responses, and for taking me seriously!

I realize I am talking about learning an entire discipline, even if all I want to do is design "small" structures. This is not something I would expect to learn in a few weeks or a few months. So, to answer SEHQ's questions, my ultimate goal would be to design and stamp small utility structures. As examples, I am talking about things like generator and well control buildings, very similar in size to the building shown by TehMightyEngineer - the utility I am working at now uses a lot of these to protect equipment from the elements (including hurricane-strength winds). Also underground structures such as valve vaults and electrical junction boxes, capable of meeting highway loading. Small concrete water tanks (talking 8 feet tall at most), process tanks, or septic tanks, as well. I will also need to understand seismic designs and codes, as they do apply where I work (I would probably also want to work toward taking and passing the CA seismic exam - it's required for civil engineers where I am currently working - which is not CA).

But, if this all turns out to be too much for my brain (or my patience), I would be satisfied with just a solid understanding of what goes into their design, and a good feeling for whether or not a standard detail has been modified or not.

Thanks for the advice to wait for the new version of ACI 318. That works fine for me, because I anticipate spending a few months, minimum, just brushing up on statics and learning structural analysis before I delve into reinforced concrete design. (that's a good first step, right?)

In all honesty, I realize that the best way to do this would be to enroll in undergrad civil engineering courses and work my way toward a civil BS, but that's not an option - I am too far away and just can't justify the money on more courses anyway, not after the masters anyway.... Plus I don't want to spend time on the other stuff I won't use, like traffic engineering.

Here are a couple of photos of small structures at our utility. The blue one is a well controls housing, and the white one is a wastewater lift station generator building, with the tops of the valve vaults shown at ground level.

Dleg, sorry about not seeing this post sooner. You've gotten some good advice above. Like you said, it would be imperative to brush up on structural analysis, statics, and mechanics of materials prior to diving into concrete. ACI 318 would be required, and I have Nilson's book on concrete design and I've got no complaints about it (of course it's over 10 years old). Another book to look into would be Simplified Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings by PCA. I haven't personally reviewed this book, but I have seen an old version of it and it does a good job of simplifying the code requirements into everyday language.

One thing that you will learn with concrete design (especially for the structures you would be designing) is that a lot of it is prescriptive. By that I mean there will be a lot of times that you will end up using code minimum requirements for your design instead of what your analysis indicates you need. These minimums are all based on numerous studies and research papers that ACI has done over the years. Good luck!

Thanks Ble - I downloaded the free pdf of that document that is currrently available on the PCA website, along with the ACI 318 Commentary book.

I started a 5-week statics course on Coursera (led by Georgia Tech), and managed to talk 3 of our junior engineers into it as well (civils with a fresh memory of this stuff). We had a fun time today discussing the first week's homework - you'd think none of us had ever taken statics by the way we fumbled through an extremely simple free body diagram! A good start, though, and will get me ready to tackle structural analysis starting in a couple of weeks.

I am also going to start a self-study of geotech following some free courses I found online, and used textbooks from Amazon which have already arrived. Geotech will be very beneficial to me even if I don't make it all the way through structures.

I will try to get back in here at some point and put in links to all the resources I have found - it's amazing what all is available out there.