Fire Engineering Training Community
The Professor: Building Construction
In this group, we'll discuss all things building construction. What are the lessons of recent fires? What have past fires taught us?. What are the developing trends in construction that will impact our ability to fight future fires?
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.
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.
Matt Thomson
What is the difference between ductile and brittle?
Aug 19, 2008
Chris Fleming
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.
Sep 4, 2008
Matt Thomson
Give a shout when you pick up Smith's book.
Sep 5, 2008