How to Design a Tall Bridge Pier in 5 Minutes 

Note: this webinar will not be recorded. 

Brace yourself for a fun, thought-provoking and slightly controversial pearl session! Hemal Patel is a stubborn millennial. We engineers too often trade our common sense and intuition for structural analysis software that has become technically more complex with every passing breath. Should I make a 3D finite element model? Of course. With material and geometric nonlinearities? Absolutely. And include thousands of plates, springs, and rigid links. Sure.

Wait, what?? Hold on! Isn’t there an easier way? How can we get a design on the right track within the preliminary stages of a project? What if a contractor is on the phone with me, and I need to provide a quick answer? What if my manager asked me to evaluate 17 different alternatives, but I need to get home in time for my kid’s piano recital?

“How to Design a Tall Bridge Pier in 5 minutes” is the first installment of a series that explains how to design various bridge components with the 5-10 rule – within 5 minutes to within 10% accuracy. In this session, the presenter explains that the preliminary design of a tall bridge pier can be completed through three easy steps: calculating the service and strength loads, sizing the pier to limit service deflection and secondary effects, and finally determining the amount of reinforcement for adequate strength.

For each of these three steps, hand calculation tricks, parametric graphs and rules-of-thumb that help to expedite the preliminary design process will be shared. This includes simplified use of the moment-area theorem, charts for equivalent depth to fixity for various soil types and equations to estimate the moment magnification percentage.

Learning Objectives

• How to estimate the service and strength loads on a bridge pier.
• How to size the pier to limit service deflection and secondary effects.
• How to estimate the amount of reinforcement needed for adequate strength.

These skills are important not only for quick decision making during preliminary design, but also for checking and verification of design calculations and plans produced by junior staff throughout the design process.

1 CE Credit

Registration

This is a virtual event on Zoom. All registrants MUST have a free Zoom account to access the webinar and must register with Zoom to receive the link.

Members - FREE!
Nonmembers - $40

Event registration  closes 30 minutes before the webinar starts.

This webinar will not be recorded. 

About the Speaker

Hemal Patel, P.E., S.E.
President, Structural Engineer, 10-4 Engineering PLLC

Hemal Patel, P.E., S.E., a structural engineer and bridge dork with 13 years of experience in bridge design. His work has included highway ramps, river crossings, commuter transit and freight railroads, etc. He has worked on large infrastructure projects involving reconstruction of major highways and public transit networks and loves the coordination and teamwork aspects of the job.