# SE Lateral Exam study tips



## Becoming SE (Dec 27, 2016)

Hi everyone!!

I need some help on study guide and tips about Lateral exam (AM &amp; PM). Taking Bridge for the afternoon. No experience with the seismic design in everyday practice. I got following resources from my last posts replies. They are NCEES practice test, PPI practice test and David Connor's bridge problems for the morning. FHWA seismic manual &amp; IDOT seismic design guide for the afternoon.  Are these enough? seems like lateral results are harder than vertical so any help on study tips and guide would be great. Thank you!!


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## geoffsandberg (Dec 27, 2016)

I did buildings for lateral day, so I can't help with study materials. But, I passed vert &amp; lat on 1st try so I can tell you what I did to study: I studied 6 months in advance of the exam, doing roughly 1 hour of study per week day after I got home from work. First I went through all of the code books and highlighted/tabbed what I thought was important. Then I went through the SERM front to back, doing all of the practice problems, this book took a lot longer to get through than the others because I really took my time with it. Then, a month or so before the exam, I went through all of the practice exams (the ones you listed).

Good luck!


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## Phatso86 (Dec 27, 2016)

geoffsandberg said:


> I did buildings for lateral day, so I can't help with study materials. But, I passed vert &amp; lat on 1st try so I can tell you what I did to study: I studied 6 months in advance of the exam, doing roughly 1 hour of study per week day after I got home from work. First I went through all of the code books and highlighted/tabbed what I thought was important. Then I went through the SERM front to back, doing all of the practice problems, this book took a lot longer to get through than the others because I really took my time with it. Then, a month or so before the exam, I went through all of the practice exams (the ones you listed).
> 
> Good luck!


sounds like you had it easy.

do you work with that material on a regular basis?


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## User1 (Dec 27, 2016)

geoffsandberg said:


> I did buildings for lateral day, so I can't help with study materials. But, I passed vert &amp; lat on 1st try so I can tell you what I did to study: I studied 6 months in advance of the exam, doing roughly 1 hour of study per week day after I got home from work. First I went through all of the code books and highlighted/tabbed what I thought was important. Then I went through the SERM front to back, doing all of the practice problems, this book took a lot longer to get through than the others because I really took my time with it. Then, a month or so before the exam, I went through all of the practice exams (the ones you listed).
> 
> Good luck!


congrats!!


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## VTBridge (Dec 27, 2016)

Becoming SE said:


> Are these enough?


I am studying for the same thing so I can't say how useful I found each reference, but here is what I am using. 

I would add the SEAOC v1 that has been mentioned previously for the morning list. This has solid examples that are well indexed. I think the other volumes may be more than needed for a bridge afternoon, but likely good information. There are similar examples in the CA PE-seismic guidebooks (i.e. Hiner or Mansour) that have a lot of practice problems for each topic, however, these cover the basic concepts and probably not enough on ACI, NDS, and AISC design. 

For the PM portion, the IL design guide, NCEES practice exams, and the FHWA manual seem to be the most recommended references. Since there is so much LRFD Guide Spec based code with state examples (Caltrans) there aren't many good examples using the old code. I plan to read the FHWA design guide, work the NCEES examples, be very familiar with any section of the AASHTO code referenced in the solution processes. I will also go through the seismic flowcharts in Appendix A3 and know them well and how they apply to the NCEES practice problems. 

I'll update with any other examples I end up using or any portions of a code, I found helpful that may not be the obvious go-to section.

Good Luck!


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## Mithrandir918 (Dec 27, 2016)

Becoming SE said:


> Hi everyone!!
> 
> I need some help on study guide and tips about Lateral exam (AM &amp; PM). Taking Bridge for the afternoon. No experience with the seismic design in everyday practice. I got following resources from my last posts replies. They are NCEES practice test, PPI practice test and David Connor's bridge problems for the morning. FHWA seismic manual &amp; IDOT seismic design guide for the afternoon.  Are these enough? seems like lateral results are harder than vertical so any help on study tips and guide would be great. Thank you!!


IDOT seismic design guide is for the most part good enough for your basic analysis and theory.  If by FHWA you mean the NHI course material and examples they offer (which are 3 examples i believe) are somewhat useful though very in depth with theory and not as much of practical use.

On that note, the examples that you may have located from FHWA are re-worked problems from the original FHWA Seismic Design Course that published 7 design guidelines and examples in 1995.  With some online searching I was able to find most of these design examples and they are without a doubt some of the best seismic references on bridge design that there is for the SE exam.  Granted the codes have changed the philosophies have not and going thru these with the new code will help you master seismic design of bridges.  The main difference between these and the new FHWA examples is the push towards displacement based design practices of bridges which requires 3d modeling for most applications.  The 1995 publications follow the force-based approach (same as required on SE) which is what you want to study.

I brought 3 of these examples into the test and they were the only thing (besides aashto of course) that i opened in the afternoon and got 100% in the depth module.

Publication No:  FHWA-SA-97-006, -007, -008,-009 ect.


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## VTBridge (Dec 28, 2016)

Mithrandir918 said:


> Publication No:  FHWA-SA-97-006, -007, -008,-009 ect.


Is there a link where these can be purchased in a set? I did not find in a quick search. 

Do you recommend any 3 over the others? 

I agree that even out of date codes can be very helpful. Especially since this is about the time the LRFD Seismic Guide Spec was created, the seismic provisions in the LRFD Bridge Spec haven't changed significantly since then (that I am aware of). I used slightly old design examples for the vertical portion of bridge PM. Going through them line by line, finding every equation in the code, and correcting with notes when there were updates proved to be a very helpful study tool. I also always cross reference section numbers and page numbers, not because it's that hard to look things up by section (although I do find page numbers quicker), but it was a good exercise to flip through to every code section as I studied. 

Thanks.


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## Lomarandil (Dec 28, 2016)

VT, they are available publicly (somewhere in the halls of government publications). I downloaded the set about a month ago. Unfortunately, I can't recall where.

I'll try to attach them here.

View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_1.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_2.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_3.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_4.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_5.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_6.pdf


View attachment FHWA__Seismic_Example_7.pdf


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## Becoming SE (Dec 28, 2016)

Thank you for providing more resources!!


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## VTBridge (Dec 28, 2016)

Thanks, I found a comment on another site that these could be purchased for $100, but that was 2009 and I can't find anything. It looks like the scanned pdfs are all that is available and reproduction is authorized. Thanks!


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## geoffsandberg (Dec 28, 2016)

Phatso86 said:


> sounds like you had it easy.
> 
> do you work with that material on a regular basis?


I do structural building design (gravity &amp; lateral) from start to finish using all construction materials, so that definitely helped. However, we do almost no seismic design in my office (Located in CT), and I never did SDC D, so studying for that was a challenge.


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## VTBridge (Dec 29, 2016)

Mithrandir918 said:


> I brought 3 of these examples into the test and they were the only thing (besides aashto of course) that i opened in the afternoon


Since these are based on the standard spec, did you follow the procedures and manually write in the LRFD code references? 

I'm interested in how to make these the most useful, was hoping that they were from the first LRFD which would be a bit more straightforward to translate. Either way, the procedure should be pretty similar to 20 years ago since most of the revisions went into the guide spec and converting to a displacement based approach. Thanks!


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