Civil Engineering Grinds/Grind Courses

drynne

Does anyone know of any colleges around the country who do revision courses for students doing repeats? I am looking for Structural Design and Structural Mechanic revision courses or even grinds. I am in the Northwest But i would be willing to travel. Or even postgrads??
Any help would be greatly appreciated, ive failed these subjects 3 times

Wavemechanic

What stage are you at? Finals?

drynne

No, 3rd year of an Honours Degree. So its Structural Mechanics 1 (Conjugates, Macauleys, Bending, Axial Loads, Torsion, Virtual Work, etc.)
and structural Design 1 (Concrete Beams, Colums, Slabs, etc. and Steel Columns, Beams, Connections, etc.)
Emailed Student Union, but got no reply. College had no info either

Dunphus

drynne wrote: »

No, 3rd year of an Honours Degree. So its Structural Mechanics 1 (Conjugates, Macauleys, Bending, Axial Loads, Torsion, Virtual Work, etc.)
and structural Design 1 (Concrete Beams, Colums, Slabs, etc. and Steel Columns, Beams, Connections, etc.)
Emailed Student Union, but got no reply. College had no info either

I can at least recommend a concrete book for you, there's one for British Standards and Eurocodes, I'm guessing you're on eurocodes at the moment anyway:

Reinforced Concrete Design

I don't know of any books that are as useful for the other topics but that concrete book is great

Wavemechanic

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions here and base my recommendations accordingly;

• You need to get the repeats this Autumn
• You turned up for most of the lectures, or at least have the notes.
• You have the contact details for a few of your buddies in your class.
• You have difficulty visualising how loaded structures perform (as opposed to having a concepts issue)
• You understand the limit state design philosophy (deflection in serviceability and collapse at ULS)
• Your maths is OK.
• You're not working to Eurocodes (either way, this won't effect your understanding of structural analysis or mechanics and most of the latest editions will probably deal with EC to some extent)
• You're prepared to do some hard work and stick at it.

Recommendations;
1. Get your hands on Mechanics of Engineering Materials (Benham & Crawford) and particularly the solutions manual - great for Free Body Diagrams - these are a must know. Read, practice, analyse and understand where you went wrong when you try the examples. Then try them again. That should take care of the mechanics.
2. The book Dunphus recommended is excellent for concrete, and gives some good insights into structural analysis as well. It won't cover Virtual work though (at least my edition that I still use 20 years later doesn't). I suggest you go to the web for worked examples - tonnes of them out there. Web is a great resource for a lot of the other stuff that you might need to get your head around.
3. Get your hands on Structural steel design to BS5950 - McGinley & Ang - great for connections and base plate design. Then make sure that you understand lateral torsional buckling and how to deal with it. Now you're most of the way there. Structural engineering Design in practice is also a good book; covers BS only but deals with all the materials.
4. Talk to your friends who passed. Ask them for help and don't take no for an answer.
5. Imagine that you're writing software to deal with one of the problems - this forces you to break the method of analysis down into chunks - easier to spot if you're making fundamental errors this way and, more importantly, forces you to follow a structured approach.
6. Practice.
7. Then practice some more.
8. You could also try downloading some of the structural analysis freeware to check some of your answers.

That went on a bit longer than intended...
If you can do the above, you will get through it. Best of luck and let us know how you get on.

Structurally Sound Mentally Unstable

As a structural engineering student who just finished my third year I recommend going by class notes as much as possible. This ensures that you don't stray from the topics and question types/difficulty that is covered in class.

• The student union will not be able to help you. These courses are too specialised so you will have to go to the departments themselves. Email the lecturers in the particular subjects.
• Like I said email the lecturers. These are the key. Ask for book/class notes/ tutorial slides. Ask can you go in and photocopy them if they are not digital.
• Have a copy of notes from the year you are sitting the exam, not the year you first took the module. There are often differences in examples year to year.
• Definatly do exam papers and do them well. There is often a big step up in the standard between the class examples and the questions that come up in the exam. The lectures wanting you to show you understand the ideas rather than learning off by heart and all that.

Books
Books, I feel from my experience, are not the best idea for mechanics as you end up using only about 10% of them. Working from class notes is always the best if you have a full set. They often go into more detail than is neccessary also.

If you are getting a book then the Mosley book Dunphus mentioned was the one reccommended to us by our design lecturer. Again he said is wasn't perfect though, as the college had its own methods for design that are specific for optimising teaching/learning.

I did buy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Structural-Elements-Chanakya-Arya/dp/0415467209/ref=dp_ob_title_bk#reader_0415467209for 2nd year design and we used it in class. That was a year ago but flicking through my copy I have quite a bit tabbed and highlighted so it must have been some use to me. It is in both eurocodes(which I am studying) and BS. There are a still a few kinks in the EC version. I am sure BS is fine by now!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Structural-Mechanics-Ray-Hulse/dp/0333804570 is a good book for structures. I just rooted this out to see if it suits your needs. Turns out it does, and I could have used it this semester as some of my topics are covered in it:mad: Anyway is has a lot of the stuff you are looking for. Bear in mind that lectures and books may call the same topics different names. Have a flick through to make sure you didn't miss any helpful topics.

Dont rush out to buy any books either Go to your college library and check out as many as you can for free.

Really best of luck, these are tough topics. Especially structures:(

rob0491

hi
I am wondering if anyone can help me, I am in third year of college studying structural engineering, I have repeats in the Autumn in structural analysis and concrete and steel design. I am looking for grinds in the Wexford/Carlow area

PM if you can help

cheers

Trhiggy83

drynne wrote: »

Does anyone know of any colleges around the country who do revision courses for students doing repeats? I am looking for Structural Design and Structural Mechanic revision courses or even grinds. I am in the Northwest But i would be willing to travel. Or even postgrads??
Any help would be greatly appreciated, ive failed these subjects 3 times

I have had a similar experience to you as in i had to repeat structural engineering in the autumn. I found that when i was doing all my exams together i didnt have enough time to dedicate to structures. My advice would be to look at past exam papers and make sure you can do all the questions. If you cant do them go and get the right answers from someone on your course. I flew through my repeat a few years back and even surprised myself. It all comes down to preparation and you need to be thoroughly prepared and look at the papers to see the trends that come up every year. If you spend enough time looking at something, you will eventually understand.

Best of Luck

Trhiggy83

rob0491 wrote: »

hi
I am wondering if anyone can help me, I am in third year of college studying structural engineering, I have repeats in the Autumn in structural analysis and concrete and steel design. I am looking for grinds in the Wexford/Carlow area

PM if you can help

cheers

I wouldnt discount grinds but i would recommend looking at the questions that keep coming up. Do out an excel sheet for the last 6-7 years to see the pattern. Then make sure you have covered yourself in each area. Usually all the answers are in the notes you have and you just feel like you cant understand these notes. Organise your notes into each topic and do out examples in each area over and over again and you will be fine. When the exam comes close expect to spend 5-6 days straight going over what you have learned. When you get to exam day you will fly it but you need to get organised now and start looking over things for a few hours each night. Repetition is the key. Also stick to the notes that were given by the course provider. If you start reading new books and looking at other authors i find you get confused a lot easier and you forget what the exact areas you need to concentrate on.

shanered

I'm repeating structural enginnering year 3 Ordinary level, steel and concrete design both modules, which is designing slabs/columns/beams etc.
I cannot offer grinds, but if anybody has similar subjects and wants to meet up to try get through it I'd consider the idea, I prefer working with people rather then on my own.

Also, if anybody has any luck finding grinds and wants to split the fee/etc let me know.

shanered

The repeat examinations have just ended last week, you may have been just a bit late, next exams are not until jan/may in the next year.