11th Week Extra Info

From SKM:

SKM has purchased the very latest in mobile 3D Laser Scanning Technology. The Riegl VMX-250 mobile laser scanner, which can be mounted on the roof of a vehicle, is used for a variety of purposes such as the mapping of roadways and rail corridors, waterways, mine sites, ports and harbours, as well as extended urban areas. Only available to SKM clients in Australia at this time, the technology has revolutionised the surveying profession with the means to capture data more rapidly, accurately and safely. For further information, contact Leigh Finlay in the Sydney office.

Woooo..... Nice technology... too bad it isn't in Malaysia. Hence, I don't hold the chance to play with this big toy!!

11th Week Day 5

Done some column checking on the drawing as the orientation of pile cap should be in correct direction with the column to get optimum distribution of both forces and moments.

For pile cap with 2 piles, we should always put the pile cap parallel with the column to ensure both the piles will receive equal forces from the column.

For Pile cap with 3 Piles, we should put the orientation of pile cap as below because the C.G. of the Force will be at the C.G. of the triangle, giving more stable distribution of forces.

For Pile cap with 4 piles or more, We will put the pile cap according to the pile dimension , whichever longer will go with the longer side while whichever shorter will goes for the shorter side

11th Week Day 4

There is a Structural Section Meeting today and as usual, alll the sub sections of structural section will update others on their current status.

The intersting thing about this Meeting is that they have a very big ?LCD? touch screen that you can use a special marker pen to draw and erase as you wish. The LCD is at the size of a white board and touchscreen features makes it a real interesting gadget to be used of.

Other than meeting, today is the further study of Pile Cap to understand more about punching shear.

11th Week Day 3

There's a talk by Sean Poh today regarding the secondment to Australia Brisbane for Mining works.

SKM been actively engaged in tender of mining works in Australia and inorder to gain some profits from this sector, SKM Malaysia have been sending peoples to SKM Aussie to get the skill and experienced required before getting into the real job.

The alk is pretty interesting showing the new technology, Involvement in mining works and also the life in Australia.

He even showed an online website that can calculate the cultural different between you and the norms of that country. This is quite useful as you seriously do not want to offend any superiors or colleague when having your training there.

11th Week Day 1~2

Study Pile Cap Design
Used Reinforced Concrete DEsign by /T .J. MacGinley

A pile cap is a thick concrete mat that rests on piles. It is part of the Foundation of a building, typically a multi-storey building, structure or heavy equipment. The pile cap distributes the load from the pillars, or piers, to the Deep foundation. A similar structure to a pile cap is a "raft", which is a foundation floor resting directly on bedrock.

The problem with designing pile cap is that the examples for pile can usually come in even number.

In construction, there will be pile cap with 3 piles beneath it. The distribution of forces and moment induced will be different.

10th Week Day 3~5

Helped Ms. Inez in checking of markings schedule and column markings.
o Check the drawing to match the value in drawing with given data.
o Check the label of column to match with the label a floor below it.
o Create an excel spreadsheet to ease up the checking and data finding.

Above is the formulised excel spreadsheet screenshot

For the excel spreadsheet I have created, I have to include recommendations to client, such as Revision required on Pile Group Design, Recommendation Length and Reduction of length.

According to a senior engineer, we cannot ask them to change their pile as we are only consultant and whether to use our recommendation is up to the judging of developer. The reason for this is because if we force them to use certain length of pile, the responsibility will be ours if the foundation fails.

10th Week Day 1~2

1) Continuation of guardhouse design from Ms. Shiao Teng.
o Column design was done this week and I have learnt that the design of column relies on a simple formula, which is :

N = 0.35Fcu Ac + 0.7Fy Asc

Where:
N = Total Axial Force on the column
Fcu = Concrete Compressive Strength
Fy = Concrete Steel strength
Ac = Concrete Area
As = Steel Area

o The spacing of shear links cannot be more than 12 times the diameter of the reinforcement bars.



2) Slab Design of guard house using MTM.
The Output, A8, B5, etc is the label for mesh design require for the slab.

· The solid line is the bottom reinforcement for the slab

· The dotted line is the top reinforcement for the slab

9th Week Day 1~5

Learned how to design guardhouse from Ms. Shiao Teng.

o To design a guard house, we need to check criteria as below:
§ Usage of guard house : Determining the loading
§ Check the architectural drawing and check the dimension of beams and columns proposed in architectural drawing.
§ Check the continuity of beams.

Overview of Guardhouse Plan

Helped Ms.Inez in checking of pile markings.

o Check the loading of pile after adjustment in borehole log.
o The borehole log will determine the SPT-N of the pile which is how many blows required by the pile driver into 1.5m of soil. Usually, N above 50 is not recommended as it will cause the pile head to fail.
o The SPT-N usually get higher when we go deeper but sometimes the SPT-N will get high and suddenly drops again. This is due to existence of hard soil layer in between of normal soil. Hence, when going through the hard should, more blows is required.

8th Week Day 5

Software Study : PROKON.

o This software is all-rounder software that can do modelling and analyse the structure (Quite similar to StaadPRO). PROKON have more interactive features that allow user to visualize the actual elements used in structure and the design is more accurate as they have different tabs for various types of design required by engineers.

Picture above shows the modelling of structure done by me.

From the figure above, we can see that PROKON is capable of modelling and also analyse a structure. PROKON can calculate:
o Deflections
o Support Reactions
o Beam Forces
o Shell (or Slab) Moment and Forces
o Moment on Beam
o Moment on Shell(or Slab)

8th Week Day 4

Revit Software Demonstration.

The Revit Building Maker feature provides a more seamless way to turn conceptual forms into functional designs. Select faces to generate walls, roofs, floors, and curtain systems. Use tools to extract important information about your building such as surface area or volume per floor. Conceptual forms may be created natively in Autodesk Revit Architecture or imported from applications such as AutoCAD®, form-Z, Rhino, Google® SketchUp®, or other ACIS- or NURBS-based applications into Autodesk Revit Architecture software as mass objects

Website : http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=3781831&siteID=123112

8th Week Day 2~3

Advance learning of Excel VBA

Learning of VBA Language

Learned how to use VBA to create user interface

Created an excel file to aid user in calculating forces acting on beam

8th Week Day 1

Self Study of VBA for Excel

Microsoft Excel have an extension software which is called VBA (Visual Basic)

which allows user to make their own formula and function through Visual Basic Language.

To enter VBA mode, Just press Alt+F11 in Excel.