Overview
Main description
The Most Complete and Up-to-Date Resource on Forensic Structural Engineering
Thoroughly revised and featuring contributions from leading experts, this definitive handbook offers comprehensive treatment of forensic structural engineering and expert witness delivery. From exploring the possible origins of errors, through investigating and analyzing failures, to working with the legal profession for assigning responsibilities, Forensic Structural Engineering Handbook, Second Edition covers every important topic in the field.
- The design and construction process
- Design and construction safety codes, standards, and regulations
- Standard of care and duty to perform
- First steps and legal concerns after a failure
- Engineering investigation of failures
- Origins and causes of failures
- Loads and hazards
- Design errors, construction defects, and project miscommunication
- Defects, deterioration, and durability
- Mechanisms and analyses of failures in steel, concrete, masonry, timber, and temporary structures; building envelope; and structural foundations
- Litigation and dispute resolution
- The expert consultant and witness
Table of contents
Contributor List;Preface;Suggestions to the Instructor;Part 1: Design and Construction Practices; Chapter 1. Design-Construction Process;Chapter 2. Design Codes and Standards;Chapter 3. Construction Safety Codes, Standards and Regulations;Chapter 4. Standard of Care;Part 2: Engineering Response to Failures;Chapter 5. The First Steps after a Failure;Chapter 6. The Engineering Investigation Process;Part 3: Causes of Failures;Chapter 7. Loads and Hazards: Their Nature, Magnitude, and Consequences;Chapter 8. Design Errors, Construction Defects, and Project Miscommunication;Chapter 9. Defects, Deterioration, and Durability;Chapter 10. Temporary Structures in Construction;Part 4: Material-Specific Forensic Analyses;Chapter 11. Steel Structures;Chapter 12. Concrete Structures;Chapter 13. Masonry Structures;Chapter 14. Timber Structures;Chapter 15. Building Facades;Chapter 16. Foundations;Part 5: Professional Practice and Legal Aspects;Chapter 17. Legal Concerns after a Failure;Chapter 18. Litigation and Dispute Resolution;Chapter 19. The Expert Consultant and Witness;Index
Author comments
Robert Ratay is an acknowledged expert in forensic structural engineering, and has an active consulting practice in that field. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University where he has been teaching the graduate course of Forensic Structural Engineering which he created and developed some years ago, and for which the Handbook of Forensic Structural Engineering is the standard textbook. Ratay has lectured at conferences and seminars in the U.S. and abroad and published in U.S. and international journals on forensic structural engineering.
