Week 5: Domes

Week 5

A tour of domes brought us to several different large buildings around campus. It was really quite exciting to talk about structural engineering. These topics greatly interest me, as a mechanically-focused engineer. Some topics I’ve learned about in TAM classes (especially solid mechanics) are buckling, twisting, and bending. This made a whole lot of sense in the context of TBH, which has huge I-beams supporting the entire building, periodically broken by horizontal supports. These horizontal supports prevent buckling. It’s really cool how the statics course I took has taught me about the distribution of forces through a truss. It helped me to better understand what was going on when we visited a lot of Domes on Tuesday.

First, we went to the football practice facility. It has an interesting dome which slopes downward from one end to the other. The massive concrete construction is covering a steel frame. Next, we went to Huff Hall. This building has a bunch of beams that at first appear to be curved, but are actually segmented and curve across the ceiling to distribute the forces to the alternating vertical beams on the sides of the building. Being an older building, it actually has a remarkably complex domed ceiling with an incredible branching framework. Then, we tried to use the secret passageway to get from Huff to the Armory, but unfortunately, the door was locked – see photo below. The Armory is a cooler dome, in my opinion. There’re two big sides that come together in a window running the length of the ceiling, supported by enormous pins. The pins are showcased by the skylights, a remarkable feat of engineering. I enjoyed this day a lot and learned about different types of domes.