Happy Wednesday,

Today, we’re kicking off a new series - the timber 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.

Before introducing the new series, I just want to let you know that I won't publish 1 newsletter a week for the next weeks. I am trying to do 3 per month or at least 2 per month. Still sticking with Wednesdays.

The reason is, that I am focusing on writing Module #2 - Structural Design of the Timber Roof of a Residential Building right now and I want to publish it in August. Writing the book is a lot of work and these newsletters also take up to 10 hours per newsletter to create because I really care about the quality as we have grown to over 12.000+ readers.

And from publishing Loads on Residential Buildings and from the feedback I have gotten about it, I think by creating these structured guides/books I create the most value and impact. Because those of you who invest a bit of money in a book/knowledge are really serious about advancing in structural engineering. And I want to help you with that the best I can.

Additionally, there is only so much I can cover in an e-mail. It impossible to teach the whole system of a structural design like a roofs system or a framed warehouse in one email. We can only cover parts of systems. But to truly understand and grasp structural engineering we need to think in structural systems. Universities also teach the structural design of parts of structural systems like beams, columns, slabs, etc. but my books teach and explain structural systems and that's why it's important that I focus on these book in the future.

So, I'll take a one week break from the Wednesdays episodes. Episode #2 of the timber design series comes out Wednesday 2nd of July.

Now back to the new series...

For this knowledge, people pay hundreds of dollars for to learn in university classes and seminars. In this series, we'll cover actually much more than I ever learned about timber structures in university. I studied a lot about timber structures in my spare time and I learned a bunch in projects at work where timber was used - both in Denmark and Germany. But especially since I moved back to Germany as Southern Germany has a big tradition building with timber.

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 12500+ people today, but I removed the inactive e-mail addresses from the Structural Basics newsletter.

The Engineering Mechanics Series and Structural Loads Series are unfortunetely not accessible anymore. But let me know if I should make them accessible for all Structural Basics members inside the membership. If more than 20 people respond to the poll below and more than 20 people signed up to the membership, I will start working on implementing it. (It's a lot of work)

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 so much content, guys. I did a quick brainstorming session a few weeks back, writing down article topics, and the list is huge. I hope you are ready for it.

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:

• Timber properties (Structural wood, Glulam, Cross-laminated timber)
• Bending verification of beams and slabs
• Shear verification of beams
• Compression verification (parallel and perpendicular to the grain of timber)
• Torsion verification
• Deflection analysis
• Vibration verification
• Lateral torsional bending of timber beams
• The strut and tie method to design pile caps, corbels, moment stiff corners, etc.

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

Design and verification of:

• Timber beams
• Timber columns
• Timber slabs (CLT) and with beams/joists
• Timber stud walls
• Timber CLT walls
• Timber frames

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 because of the number of screws/nails and there edge distances.

• Shear capacity of screws
• Shear capacity of nails
• Shear capacity of bolts
• Shear capacity of dowels
• Tensile capacity of screws
• Tensile capacity of nails
• Tensile capacity of bolts
• Connection verification of timber-timber connections
• Connection verification of steel-timber connections
• Momentstiff timber connection

You see, there are many topics that we need to cover, so you will be confident in timber 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 timber design series), I’ll recommend checking out our video tutorial on the different types of beams, we use in structural engineering.

Short intro today, I’ll see you in 2 weeks on Wednesday.

Cheers,

Laurin.

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