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SUMMARY:A tale of three towers - Chris Burgoyne\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20211008T140000Z
DTEND:20211008T150000Z
UID:TALK163195@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mishael Nuh
DESCRIPTION:There have been three major failures of tower structures in my
  lifetime.  Ronan Point\, which suffered a partial collapse in 1968 due t
 o a gas explosion\; the World Trade Centre which suffered a total collapse
  in 2001 due to a terrorist attack\, and Grenfell Tower which caught fire 
 in 2017.  Each was caused by something for which the buildings were not d
 esigned\, but it will be argued that each was a failure on the part of the
  engineer (as opposed to the architect).  Each case caused public outrage
  at the poor standard of our buildings\, and each led\, or should lead\, t
 o revisions of our building codes.  At the same time we hear criticisms t
 hat our buildings are vastly overdesigned\, and are very wasteful of resou
 rces\; can both criticisms be right?   We teach advanced structural anal
 ysis and probabilistic design\, and we have computer codes to give more an
 d more precise solutions for loading cases that the buildings will never s
 ee.  Are we designing buildings for the wrong thing?
LOCATION:Zoom (email structures-admin@eng.cam.ac.uk for link)
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