General Feedback – CIVE5013/5913 Coursework 1 and 2 - 2021: Coursework 1 a) Letter (10 Marks) A letter template is composed of addresses (to and from), date, subject, signature with position held and if an attachment is included, the term Enc. at the end. Dear Sir – Yours faithfully; Dear Name – Yours sincerely (note the small case for faithfully / sincerely). Anything else is more informal; this is a business letter which should be composed on a formal footing. b) Layout (10 Marks) Report as an attachment to the letter: Contents page; List of Figures / Tables, Introduction (Abstract may be omitted); Detailed sections; Conclusions / Summary, List of References; Appendices. Report contained within the body of the letter (and possibly using Appendices):- Less prescriptive but should use headings and sub-headings; Marks awarded for ‘flow’ of letter; Summary / Conclusion tends to be written within the body of the letter – this is fine and marks were given accordingly. In either case, your Summary should include your recommendation (and not a choice). Often Summaries were minimal (a couple of lines) or missing so I inferred a summary from your letter if possible (however, if the latter, this would not have achieved a ‘dull’ mark). c) Technical content (60 Marks Total: 30 for Original design; 15 for each of the two solutions) For the Original design, no more than 20 Marks were awarded for clearly presenting the analysis and the stated maximum deflection and inter-storey drift. (No more than 10 marks were allocated for a similar presentation for the two options). Therefore, provided there was evidence of the analysis and the deformations were mentioned for each (of the 3 analysis cases), up to 40/60 marks were awarded. For the original design, the remaining 10 marks were awarded depending on the description of the proposed structure and why it was not suitable for seismic locations (re-entrant corners, mass irregularities, lack of vertical and horizontal symmetry etc) – an explanation of each of these reasons should be included and related to the recommendations in EC8 (covered in the lectures I gave). For the two solutions, explanations of why the stiffening elements were positioned where they were and how this was determined; plus, how the stiffening elements work (increase stiffness / provide ductility etc) should be included to obtain the remaining. (The stiffening elements should also be applied correctly and realistically, i.e. bracing should be of linear stiffness vertically – same style – and full height of the building, every bay should not be braced etc. Any variation in bracing (such as at the ground floor soft storey) should be discussed.) If shear walls were provided as a solution, often 3 or more were suggested around the external face of the ‘tower’ and some were provided as half-bay internal lift-shafts. However, many of you failed to mention the effect of including a shear wall on your the foundations (this is also the case for the bracing solution above); also, how do the beams connect, were the columns replaced etc? Some suggested dual systems – this works if one is primary and one is secondary but again there was often no explanation by those who presented this type of solution. Dual systems are often included but very complicated (matching stiffness). The external beam spanning two bays (where the column was omitted) should have been identified as a problem in the initial analysis and considered separately (unless the solution matched one of the Options, i.e. a moment frame); an additional column to shorten the beam span to 6m was not allowed, neither was including bracing in that bay. d) Conclusions / Summary (10 Marks) and References (10 Marks) Marks for References (not Wikipedia and no reference to the lecture notes was considered) were awarded approximately as follows:- 0 to 3 References ≤ 4 marks 3 to 5 References ≈ 7 marks Above 7 References ≈ 10 marks Coursework 2 Layout (10 Marks) Abstract; Contents page (section numbers with page numbers); List of Figures / Tables – including page numbers; Introduction; Detailed sections (using the ‘headings’ provided); Conclusions / Summary (I accepted this in terms of the overall Report or just as part of the final section on ‘Domestic construction in your country’), List of References; Appendices. All figures and tables should be referred to in the text; when referring to figures and tables in the text a capital F or T should be used whether at the start or the middle of a sentence. Figure titles go below the figure; Table titles go above the table. Refer to the figures in the text – if a figure is not referred to in the text then why is it there? All figures should have a title! Seismic Forces (5 Marks) How they are generated and relate to the earthquake; inertia (and equations, i.e. Newton’s); horizontal and vertical forces; gravity force design; variation in forces across the structure and how this changes with time; effects on earthquake motion and relationship between building size/type and earthquake (period / resonance); amplification, damping. Load Path (5 Marks) A good description with diagrams; there are two systems – gravity (linked to vertical aspect of seismic loading) and lateral loading – describe paths through the structure itself and if a bracing system is present; mention redundancy (potential for second lateral load path if first fails). Construction methods and materials (advantages and disadvantages) (30 Marks) At least the 4 main materials should be discussed (timber, masonry, concrete and steel); several forms of masonry can also be discussed in addition, for example. Include figures. (20 marks.) This section should also include methods / construction details of how the different structure types can be improved to resist seismic forces – ‘details’ mean improvements at the joint / reinforcement scale (possibly micro scale) rather than the global / macro scale, i.e. introduction of bracing / base isolation etc. (10 Marks for this metric.) Examples using figures were preferred but marks also awarded for descriptive text. Examples of Failures (10 Marks) This section should contain many figures; each figure title should describe the type of failure (10+ figures with explanations would have scored max marks). This section was accepted with or without text supplementing the figures. I also looked back into your previous sections to see if examples were provided there (in case you were worried about duplication) and considered those examples. Domestic Construction (20 Marks) I was looking for a description of the house (construction details/methods, geometry, a plan layout of the house), and an explanation as to why it would not work in earthquake regions; then, how it could be improved to resist an earthquake; finally, a summary. Many responses focussed on the materials and the construction details but not the irregularities present in UK housing (or vice versa). Also many failed to recognise the large mass (concrete tiled roof) at the top of the house and the irregular geometry in both the plan and elevation of the structure. References (20 Marks) I was looking for 20 good references – i.e. academic papers, published books (reputable authors). For every good reference, one mark was awarded. References from Organisations / Web searches / pages were considered but with a lot less weighting. (Note: This coursework (and the type of questions asked in this coursework) is also to help you formulate your answer to a typical exam question where you are given a picture and asked to identify the failure mechanism and other aspects of the scenario presented.) J. P. Forth March 2021