What Is The Purpose Of Hydro graphic Surveying?

What Is The Purpose Of Hydro graphic Surveying?

Hydro graphic survey is the science of measurement and description of features which affect maritime navigation, marine construction, dredging, offshore oil exploration/offshore oil drilling and related activities.

What Is A Tacheometer?

Tacheometry, from the Greek "quick measure", is a system of rapid surveying, by which the positions, both horizontal and vertical, of points on the earth's surface relatively to one another are determined without using a chain or tape or a separate leveling instrument.

Civil Engineering Shorts Question

1.  What Does It Mean To Survey A Boat?
   Answer :
   Basically, it is a detailed inspection of a boat, hopefully done by a qualified, diligent, intelligent and honest surveyor, for the purpose of determining its current condition and seaworthiness.
2. What Is A Chartered Quantity Surveyor?
   Answer :
   Members and Fellows of the RICS entitled to use the designation (and a number of variations such as "Chartered Building Surveyor" or "Chartered Quantity Surveyor" or "Chartered Civil Engineering Surveyor" depending on their field .

What Is An Automatic Level?

What Is An Automatic Level?



A dumpy level, builder's auto level, leveling instrument, or automatic level is an optical instrument used to establish or verify points in the same horizontal plane. It is used in surveying and building with a vertical staff to measure height differences and to transfer, measure and set heights.

How to determine the size of elastomeric bearings?

How to determine the size of elastomeric bearings?

 For elastomeric bearing, the vertical load is resisted by its compression while shear resistance of the bearing controls the horizontal movements.

The design of elastomeric bearings are based on striking a balance between the provision of sufficient stiffness to resist high compressive force and the flexibility to allow for translation and rotation movement. The cross sectional area is normally determined by the allowable pressure on the bearing support. Sometimes, the plan area of bearings is controlled by the maximum allowable compressive stress arising from the consideration of delamination of elastomer from steel plates. In addition, the size of elastomeric bearings is also influenced by considering the separation between the structure and the edge of bearing which may occur in rotation because tensile stresses deriving from separation may cause delamination. The thickness of bearings is designed based on the limitation of its horizontal stiffness and is controlled by movement requirements. The shear strain should be less than a certain limit to avoid the occurrence of rolling over and fatigue damage. The vertical stiffness of bearings is obtained by inserting sufficient number of steel plates. 

What are the advantages of assigning the central pier and the abutment as fixed piers?

 What are the advantages of assigning the central pier and the abutment as fixed piers? 

For abutment pier to be assigned as fixed pier while the bridge is quite long, the longitudinal loads due to earthquake are quite large. As the earthquake loads are resisted by fixed piers, the size of fixed piers will be large and massive. In this connection, for better aesthetic appearance, the selection of abutment as fixed piers could accommodate the large size and massiveness of piers. Normally abutments are relatively short in height and for the same horizontal force, the bending moment induced is smaller.

For the central pier to be selected as the fixed pier, the bridge deck is allowed to move starting from the central pier to the end of the bridge. However, if the fixed pier is located at the abutment, the amount of movement to be incorporated in each bearing due to temperature variation, shrinkage, etc. is more than that when the fixed pier is located at central pier. Therefore, the size of movement joints can be reduced significantly. 

In bridge widening projects, the method of stitching is normally employed for connecting existing deck to the new deck. What are the problems associated with this method in terms of shrinkage of concrete?

In bridge widening projects, the method of stitching is normally employed for connecting existing deck to the new deck. What are the problems associated with this method in terms of shrinkage of concrete?

In the method of stitching, it is a normal practice to construct the widening part of the bridge at first and let it stay undisturbed for several months. After that, concreting will then be carried out for the stitch between the existing deck and the new deck. In this way, the dead load of the widened part of bridge is supported by itself and loads arising from the newly constructed deck will not be transferred to the existing deck which is not designed to take up these extra loads.

One of the main concerns is the effect of stress induced by shrinkage of newly widened part of the bridge on the existing bridge. To address this problem, the widened part of the bridge is constructed a period of time (say 6-9 months) prior to stitching to the existing bridge so that shrinkage of the new bridge will take place within this period and the effect of shrinkage stress exerted on the new bridge is minimized.

Traffic vibration on the existing bridge causes adverse effect to the freshly placed stitches. To solve this problem, rapid hardening cement is used for the stitching concrete so as to shorten the time of setting of concrete. Moreover, the stitching work is designed to be carried out at nights of least traffic (Saturday night) and the existing bridge may even be closed for several hours (e.g. 6 hours) to let the stitching works to left undisturbed.

Sometimes, longitudinal joints are used in connecting new bridge segments to existing bridges. The main problem associated with this design is the safety concern of vehicles. The change of frictional coefficients of bridge deck and longitudinal joints when vehicles change traffic lanes is very dangerous to the vehicles. Moreover, maintenance of longitudinal joints in bridges is quite difficult.