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 Already out of date?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
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