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Discussion Questions From Building Construction by Chief Smith

I'm just about done reading "Building Construction, Methods and Materials for the Fire Service" by Chief Michael Smith.

This is a very easy read that is great as a stand alone or as a refresher if you have read other books on Fire Service Building Construction (Brannigan or others). Chief Smith includes some really good questions for discussion in each of his chapters and I'm interested in discussing them here. I'll post a question every few days as my schedule allows, please add your thoughts.

Please indicate if you have this book in your library as I would like to use the ON SCENE examples at the end of each chapter, but only if there is sufficient interest and enough people with copies of the book so that I don't have to copy each example here.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Matt Thomson on August 19, 2008 at 8:27pm

Discuss and define shear as it relates to firefighter safety.

What is the difference between ductile and brittle?

Permalink Reply by Chris Fleming on September 4, 2008 at 9:34am

Matt,
I haven't picked up Chief Smith's book yet, but I think this discussion group is a great idea. Dusting off the cobwebs between the ears, shear is the effect when forces are directly opposed. The problem is when the force fighting gravity ( the building) looses to gravity the system fails rapidly. Ductile is the characteristic of a material to "flex" under a load, whereas something that is brittle "flexes" very little. Steel is more ductile than, say, concrete which is very brittle. This is why concrete works much better for tranfering a load vertically (with gravity) and steel is better at transfering a load horizontally (perpendicular to gravity). We can say that ductile materials handle shear forces better than brittle materials. Engineers combine the two to get the most out of both materials. At least this is what I remember off the top of my head.

Permalink Reply by Matt Thomson on September 5, 2008 at 8:33am

Thanks Chris, that helped me understand Ductile/Brittle much better. I like to remember Shear as having a sliding motion, like a barber's "Shears".

Give a shout when you pick up Smith's book.

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