Happy Wednesday friends,

Today, we’re kicking off a new series - the steel design series. The next weeks and months will be packed with structural engineering value. If you have been subscribed for a while, you know how much into detail we went in the reinforced concrete series and timber design series.

All this knowledge that you'll be receiving in this newsletter will be free. Only if you want to access past episodes, you can do so with the 5€/month membership.

Those of you who have been around for some time understand now how we structured the content of the last months and years. We have built up our knowledge of structural engineering fundamentals to be able to dive into structural design now.

• We started on January 24th 2024 with the Engineering Mechanics Series. In these 16 weeks, we covered everything from static systems like simply supported beams, cantilevers, frames, etc. to the calculation of geometric properties like section modulus and moment of inertia of cracked concrete sections. Back then, 1215 people were subscribed to the Structural Basics newsletter. Today, we are over, 12500+ structural engineers in this community.
• On June 12th 2024 we continued with the Structural Loads Series. 4048 of you had already been part of the team there. Week by week, we learned how to calculate the characteristic loads we use to design buildings and structures. In the end, we also learned how loads travel through a building.
• On October 2nd 2024 we started our first design series: The Reinforced Concrete Series. This series includes #29 episodes. At the time we were 8105 people subscribed to Structural Basics. We would be much more than 13000+ people today, but I removed the inactive e-mail addresses from the Structural Basics newsletter.
• We started on June 18th 2025 the Timber Design Series. As the reinforced concrete series, this series includes also #29 episodes.

You can sign up here: https://structuralbasics.kit.com/products/exclusive-newsletter​

I started with the Engineering Mechanics Series and Structural Loads Series because they were important to have the necessary foundation (=fundamental engineering knowledge) to build a strong and stable building (=structural design).

In my opinion, structural engineering verifications can be split up into 3 or 4 parts:

• Loads and load combinations
• Engineering mechanics
• Material properties
• Structural design

Without knowing how to calculate loads or which static system to use, you can’t design a reinforced concrete beam correctly.

Introduction To What’s Coming

There will be alot of content, guys. I did a quick brainstorming session a few weeks back, writing down article topics, and the list is huge, again.

Occasionally, we’ll be publishing content about other topics, as we have been doing. This could be a guest post, a personal story from our industry, an article about a cool tool or workflow I use.

So here are a few topics we’ll be covering in this new series:

• Steel properties
• Typical steel profiles
• Cross-section classes
• Bending verification
• Tension and compression verification
• Shear verification
• Torsion verification
• Bending, shear and axial verifications combined
• Buckling verification
• Lateral torsional buckling verification
• Deflection analysis

Once we have covered these verifications/”basics”, we’ll move on to design “real” structural elements.

Design and verification of:

• Steel beams
• Steel columns
• Steel frames
• Steel bracing

But the most challenging and in most cases most critical part of timber structures is the connection design. The connection verification often defines the cross-sectional dimensions.

• Bolted connections
• Welded connections
• Hinged connections
• Momentstiff connections
• And typical steel connections

You see, there are many topics that we need to cover, so you will be confident in steel design.

And as we go, I’ll find new topics, which we’ll write about.

Final Words

I am really excited about this new series, because structural design is the thing I enjoy the most about structural engineering.

And seeing your design come to life is really rewarding. Our designs have an impact on other people’s life and our environment.

If you want to catch up on engineering basics (which will definitely help you for the steel design series), I’ll recommend checking out our video tutorial on determinate and indeterminate structures.

​

Short intro today, I’ll see you soon for episode #2.

Cheers,

Laurin.

​↓ Follow me on Social Media. ↓

​​​