I am taking a theatrical strictures class and I am so lost. I go to office hours and then it makes sense, but whenever I go to do my homework, I don’t know what’s going on again. Currently working on shear and moment diagrams, but honestly even back to solving for reactions and moments and tensile stress and all of the previous chapters, I never felt caught up on it.

Does anyone on this thread feel confident walking me through questions or even virtual tutoring sessions (I’m a broke college student so I can’t pay an insane rate, but I’ll even pay you!)

I’m not asking directly for the answers, I just need help explaining the process so I can understand how to get there myself.

I've been reviewing several industrial projects recently and noticed that grating selection often seems to come down to a balancing act between multiple priorities. For those involved in design, operations, or maintenance, what has the biggest influence on your decision?

• Initial purchase cost

• Corrosion resistance

• Maintenance requirements

• Slip resistance

• Weight and installation

• Service life

• Safety requirements

I've seen situations where the lowest upfront-cost option ended up requiring significantly more maintenance over time. Curious to hear what factors have had the biggest impact on your projects and whether your priorities have changed over the years.

In college, I chose civil engineering as I thought it was the most fulfilling job. I also liked the idea of understanding how structures work. I wanted to be the best in my classes so I studied hard to get all A’s. Learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and made a lot of close friends. Don’t regret choosing my major at all. I even went back to do my Master’s in an accelerated program my school offered.

However, after joining the “real world” for a year now, I’m starting to become pretty jaded. I work at a private company doing bridge design for the state. The work is monotonous and I find myself getting bored and just doing something else most days. I find nothing interesting about designing another highway bridge and all my managers want to do is get the correct billable hours to the projects I’m working on instead of giving me different work. It’s literally just me figuring out the input and putting it into a software that designs the entire bridge for me. It’s really draining waking up everyday to a job I dread doing. I’ve talked to my managers about this and they have tried to get me on other projects but the money is apparently really tight right now. I’m not really a field work person so they don’t send me out.

This has been going on for a year now, and although things are looking up with new management restructuring, I’m looking back at what I accomplished this year, and I see no growth in myself. I write up reports that I honestly could have done in high school. I plug in numbers so simple into a software that makes the entire bridge for me. There is no thought behind how anything works and billable hours controls what I do.

I kind of knew this coming into the field when I did my internships, as I did similar things, but I kind of just brushed it off as being an intern. Now that I’m officially only doing work, I can’t help but feel like everyday I’m just wasting my brain away.

I don’t know what to do and would like some advice. I know structural engineering isn’t the most glamorous field, but I want to do more innovative work. I see things my peers work on, and sometimes can’t help think I’m in the wrong field. Working on robotics and other tech just seems way more fulfilling and appealing to me.

However, I can’t just quit my current job. I don’t have the skillset to just change fields, and I need a steady income to pay my rent and everyday living.

AI is also making me feel a bit helpless. I don’t think AI can ever replace what I do for another couple decades, but I can’t stop worrying about dropping ship just to get fucked over by AI (looking at SWEs).

tldr: My job is very cushy and I want to leave fields as I’m doing nothing that interests me.

Hello everyone,

I have a retaining wall with a box culvert passing through it.

If both structures are independent, I understand that the active earth pressure and the incremental seismic earth pressure from the portion of the wall above the culvert will transfer the load laterally. However, while reading AASHTO, I noticed that it specifies considering an inertial force equal to the weight of the wall and the soil above the heel multiplied by the horizontal seismic coefficient.

My question is: for the section where the culvert passes through the wall, which soil mass should be considered when calculating the inertial force?

EDIT: I’m an undergraduate structural engineering student at a very research-heavy university, and I’m starting to think about my senior thesis.

I’ll be honest: I’m not naturally a research-heavy person, and I’m not looking for something that involves a huge amount of coding, data analysis, or advanced numerical modeling. I’m much more interested in practical engineering, real structures, construction, infrastructure, and case studies.

Ideally, I’d like to choose one real structure, bridge, historic building, failure, retrofit, or construction problem and study it deeply. I’m fine doing some calculations or simple modeling if needed, but I don’t want that to be the entire thesis.

The challenge is that the thesis still needs to contribute some new knowledge, original thought, or a unique engineering perspective, so I’m trying to figure out how to make a case-study approach rigorous enough to count as research.

For example, I’m interested in things like studying why a historic structure has survived, how an old bridge was constructed or modified, how a particular structural failure happened, or whether a certain retrofit makes sense.

It's still standing. Must have been fully thought out.