Civil Engineering

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  • Topic: Civil engineering, Structural engineering, Geotechnical engineering
  • Pages : 2 (470 words )
  • Download(s) : 1400
  • Published : December 8, 2008
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A good foundation is necessary to keep a building or structure standing tall and straight. If a foundation is to shallow the building or structure will lean or fall. An example of a bad foundation is the leaning tower of Pisa. The foundation was laid badly witch caused the tower to lean. Foundations are used to transfer some of the weight of a structure to the soil. There are two types of foundations engineers use, shallow and deep foundation. Shallow foundations are used for smaller buildings that don’t need as much support. Deep foundations are used for bigger buildings such as skyscrappers witch need more support that the first couple layers of soil can not give them.

A tough task for engineers is building structures on slopes, this is when they call in a geotechnical engineer. The job of a geotechnical engineer is to inspect the soil and earth around the foundation before it is laid to see how the environment will effect it. They take samples of soil and make decisions if or how a structure can be built in that spot. These engineers also design the foundations, earthworks, and monitors every aspect of the building process. Earthworks are basically buildings or mounds created by the moving of a lot of dirt.

Civil engineering is the job of building structures, buildings, roads, airports and many more things. I think this is one of the most important jobs there are. This is one of the oldest engineering perfessions. To become a civil engineer you typically have to complete a four year college program and major in civil engineering. The main types of civil engineering are, coastal, construction, earthquake, environmental, geotechnical, structural, and transportation.

Structural engineering dates back to around 2700 BC. Back then structural engineers were mixed in with architectures. Now they are two totally different professions architecture is the planning and diagramming of structures and structural engineering actually build the buildings....
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