October, 4th 2022 | Datum Engineers | SEAoT TAMU 3rd General Meeting
For the third meeting of the Fall Semester, we had the privilege of hosting Tim Stocks from Datum Engineers. He discussed the design of a complex single-story building located in San Antonio Botanical Gardens. The San Antonio Botanical Garden serves as a 38-acre living museum of plants, tranquil escape, living classroom, research and conservation facility, and entertainment venue where art and cultural experiences come to life. He highlighted in this presentation is the Education and Event Center, an elegant single-story building that challenged all consultants and taught how to make a single-story structure complex. The major challenges were design of the truss with changing layout on each section due to changes in roof architectural form, the design of curve and folding walls, coordinating with the contractor, and the design of the slab on grade. Also, bolted connections were preferred over the welded connection for better connection quality as welding quality relies on contractor work. At last, we had a Q&A session to wrap up the meeting.
October, 18th 2022 | Jacobs | SEAoT TAMU 4th General Meeting
For the fourth general meeting, we hosted Gabriel Serna from Jacobs Director of the structural engineering group in Dallas-Forth worth. He has over 20 years of experience as a structural engineer on domestic and international projects. He discussed the Implementation of Structural Dynamics to Solve Unique Challenges in the Energy Sector in that he covered two projects. First, United States Virgin Islands Solar Array Rebuild Project – How structural dynamics were implemented in the design of solar arrays previously destroyed in hurricane-level winds. Second, Design of structural systems to support high-velocity rotating equipment in high-efficiency power plants. Before going deep into presentation, he told important skill set required to become successful structural engineer not only technically but also managerially. Lastly, we had an interesting Q&A session as the final part of the meeting.
Jay Parmar – President SEAoT TAMU Student Chapter – jayparmar@tamu.edu