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Eric Gordon

English 1201

Professor Cook

21 March 2021

How are buildings designed to withstand harsh weather and even natural disasters.

Buildings and structures have always caught my eye and I’ve recently decided to pursue a civil

engineering degree. I am passionate about engineering so I decided to research the recent

advances in civil engineering to battle earthquakes, hurricanes and other weather conditions.

Civil Engineering has been around since the first civilizations. The Egyptians building

the Great Pyramids of Giza is one example of early civil engineering. They had to know where

they could tunnel out and how to bear the load of the heavy stones. Manchu Picchu, Peru is a

high seismic area and the early people of Machu Picchu must have been experts in civil

engineering. They built a full city in the Andes Mountains while battling earthquakes and it still

stands today.

Studying recent advances help engineers make new ones. Advances in civil engineering

have made a huge difference in a structure's ability to withstand weather. Seismic engineers (a

branch of civil engineering) have made some great advances to battle seismic activity. Lead

rubber bearings are made of rubber housing to which a lead core bearing. These bearings can

absorb vibrations that weaken the structural integrity of the building. Steel plate shear walls work

by absorbing lateral stress. Under great amounts of stress these walls are designed to bend but

not buckle, preventing the building from falling.

Opposed to preventing earthquakes all together, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is

the idea of monitoring structural integrity to predict failures before they happen. The idea is not
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new but has been an expensive process in the past. The newest advances allow this process to be

done cheaper and easier.

Hurricanes, and the damages they cause, along the coast of the United States have been

studied. The conclusion is that many of the severely damaged houses had damaged foundations.

The foundations that had damage were found to be very shallow and the ones with little to no

damage had deep driven piles of foundation. It is obvious that the designers that didn’t take this

“coastal hazard” weren't taken into account for some of these houses.

Testing a building or bridge design against wind and earthquake is an important part of

engineering the structure to withstand such weather circumstances. Engineers build a model of

the structure and place it in a wind tunnel and test it up to hurricane 5 levels of wind. Structures

that are in a high area of seismic activity are then placed on a table that can simulate vibrations

up to the most trembling of earthquakes ever recorded.

Some ways engineers have designed various structures to withstand harsh weather are

lead-rubber bearings, steel plated steel walls, structural health monitoring, deep rooted

foundations and better testing of models. These advancements have proven to counteract the

structural failures due to weather.

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Works Cited

“5 Civil Engineering Innovations That Help Buildings Withstand Earthquakes.” Norwich

University Online,

online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/5-civil-engineering-innovations-that-he

lp-buildings-withstand-earthquakes.

Ashley Williams, AccuWeather staff writer. “How Are US Bridges Built to Withstand Powerful

Winds, Hurricanes and Earthquakes?” AccuWeather,

www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-are-us-bridges-built-to-withstand-powerful

-winds-hurricanes-and-earthquakes/345762.

Coulbourne, William L. “Foundation Design in Coastal Flood Zones.” Advances in Hurricane

Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers, 9 Jan. 2013,

ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784412626.009.

Damikoukas, Spyros, et al. “Direct Identification of Reduced Building Models Based on Noisy

Measurements for Performance Based Earthquake Engineering.” Journal of Building

Engineering, vol. 34, Feb. 2021. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.jobe.2020.101776.

History of Civil Engineering, www.thecivilengg.com/History.php.