Prestressed Concrete

Currently I am taking Dr. Michael Collins' course on prestressed concrete. This course introduces the ideas behind the design of prestressed members as well as the advantages of this particular system. The system takes regular reinforced concrete and adds tendons which are stretched during the casting process. Once the member has cured the strands are released compressing the section. This may seem counter intuitive as it is actually adding compressive stresses to a member to increase its performance. The reason it works is that concrete is very good in compression and terrible in tension so by compressing the member the negative effects associated with concrete cracking are mitigated. Therefore the members are much stiffer and will actually sustain less damage under seismic loadings.

I am really enjoying the class because of the material and also the professor. Dr. Collins is really old school and only believes in "chalk and talk". He goes on at least one rant a day about how computers are ruining young engineers because they get too caught up in the number of significant figures and do not develop good engineering judgment. One thing he repeats over and over is that he would rather be approximately correct than precisely wrong. He is full of great quotes and weaves them into thirty minute stories about the history of math, roman engineering, or more often than not some tidbit about the life of Robert Hooke.

The course has been taught at break neck speed but I feel like Dr. Collins has done a good job of addressing all of the necessary material as well spreading out the work load. I can't believe that the final exam is in only two days and that another month has flown by. I am kind of glad that the test is coming so soon because the weather has just started to get warm and we just got the extra hour of sunlight from daylight savings. With these two factors combined I am finding it hard to study because all I want to do is walk through Pavia with a cone of fresh gelato admiring the sun as it sets over the river.