Practice 1
In my third year in college, there is an engineering competition that strengthened my belief. This competition required us to inspect the bridges in our city for whether they need rehabilitation or reconstruction and to put forward a proposal. Through the process, we found numerous factors that we had to consider in advance: To start with, we had to survey the traffic demand. Next, since Taiwan is a multi-hazard region, the bridge must encounter several challenges like 1) bridge pier scour results from intense rainfall and high gradient streams, 2) hypersaline environments, 3) near-fault effects on the bridge, and 4) wind-induced vibration. Mitigating these hazards relies heavily on the foresight of engineers, but the construction codes and regulations in our country are lack of a multi-hazard focus. Thus we searched a lot of related journal papers, discussed with our advisor, and built up a simple simulation model to sparing the bridge from potential disasters. Joyfully, we finally won the second prize in the competition and reviewers encouraged us to conduct more research on the challenges we confronted. This precious experience reinforced my belief in disaster prevention, in which I believe a structural engineer can contribute.
