OOC:

Giovanni Bryden

Combat Engineer

Qualification Exam

Story 1: Architecture and Structural Engineering

It was weird to be back in a lecture hall, there was no doubt about that. There wasn’t enemy fire to evade, and no one was barking orders at the top of their lungs over a Comlink. There wasn’t artillery fire to dodge, nor unruly rioter to suppress. It would take a little getting used to.

Sergeant First Class Giovanni Bryden took a look around the lecture hall. He must have been a few minutes early. There were only a few men and women in grey uniforms dotting the desks in lecture hall CE203. As usual, the prettier young lady there caught his eye and he made a bee-line for the seat adjacent to her.

“Hey, I’m Giovanni.” He looked over and tried his best not to look like a creep.

It failed.

The young lady got up and walked towards the front of the class. What little chatter the students had been participating in now came to a halt as their eyes focused on the front of the room, where their young, attractive professor cleared her throat and readied herself to speak.

“Good morning students” She waited, as was the custom, for her students to reply.
They did, although not with overwhelming enthusiasm. It was early in the morning on a Monday. No doubt, many of them had been drinking just hours prior.

“A short announcement first off,” she waded through some papers on her desk, and with a delighted “Ahhh” she pulled up a file and opened it. Taking a moment to read it, she looked up to address the small crowd that had now gathered in lecture hall CE203.

“The Materials Science class has been rescheduled for tomorrow evening, in this room.”

A few sighs of disappointment could be heard, and in the room where there were once about three dozen, there were now five. This was a little more consistent with the subject matter, since the VE combat engineering course was notorious for the  percentage of people it flunked out.

After all, engineering was no joke. A decision made by an engineer had a direct effect on, at the very least, the others in his squad. Precision and professionalism were stressed even further in the case of designing and constructing some kind of building or make-shift fortification for a larger group of people.

Giovanni had met the challenge openly on the first day of class, and he was ready for it now. He was so close he could taste it, and it tasted like a book being dropped on a desk…

He snapped back from his daydream at the sound of a large manual being dropped on the desk in front of him.
“The name of the class is Architecture and Structural Engineering,” she walked to each of the five desks and dropped the same manual in front of each student.

“However, as a Combat engineer, your duty is not to make the structure you design and create aesthetically pleasing. You should be mainly concerned with making sure it doesn’t kill anyone. Plain and simple.” She finished handing out the books and made her way back to the front of the room.

“I’m here to make sure  you don’t kill everyone in your squad and rot in the imperial prison.”

She dimmed the lights and turned on a projector. The far wall came to life and the schematics for a number of different classic structures were graphically represented.
Giovanni took this as a cue to take his data pad out and begin to take notes.

“Every structure is made up of the same six elements…” She clicked a button on her data pad and the projected image changed accordingly. On the screen now where these six structures, outlined in detail.

“Columns, beams, plates, arches, catenaries, and shells. Master these five elements, and you will be more than ready to build any structure for your squad, or for the Army as a whole.” She continued, at a fast pace. Clearly she knew that the students had not made it this far for no reason. She assumed they all learned quickly, and at the least, had heard some mention of these elements before, whether during their civilian life in an institution or in Tadath, progressing through the engineering program.

“Your classic column is a vertical structure. This vertical structure will transmit the weight of the load above it, through compression, to another structural element below. Keep in mind that the column can only transmit force through tension or compression. Its capacity to transmit this force depends on its material makeup, the length, and geometry of the column.” A wire frame of a regular circular column, one foot in diameter and ten feet high appeared on the screen. On the side was a chart that included its maximum load and other characteristics.

“The second basic structure is a beam. This one is pretty self explanatory. If you have never seen a beam in your life, or don’t know what a beam is, you may want to reconsider your career choice.” Giovanni chuckled a bit and wrote something down on his pad.

“It can resist and support loads by bending, or buckling. It can be supported on one side, known as cantilevering, or on both sides. It can be oriented vertically to resist side to side pressures such as earthquake or other types of horizontal movement. Mostly, they are used to resist vertical loads.

“Plates are probably the simplest structures, but along with beams are the most commonly used in any type of construction project. A sheet of metal, or a concrete slab are plates. A piece of plywood is a very poor plate. Any questions? Didn’t think so. Moving on!”

I didn’t think most of this stuff would be common knowledge, thought Giovanni to himself. It was true that the basic six structures were very…basic. But at the same time, he had a feeling that this was all deceptively simple.

He stopped listening for a little while and picked up the manual the professor had handed to him. What he saw inside made him cry a little and he put it down quickly. Sure, the six structures were very basic. What he didn’t know for sure, but definitely suspected, was that there was much more to them. And indeed, there was enough to them to fill a seven-hundred and fifty-eight long manual.

Inside he saw mathematical formulas on how to calculate load, strength, and stiffness. There were equations incorporating symbols he hadn’t seen in years to determine what the buckling capabilities of a column were. There was a chapter devoted to the difference between a dead load and a live load. At this point, Giovanni’s head began to spin.

Before long, professor what’s-her-name had arrived on the last of the structures.

“Catenaries are something students have the hardest time putting their grimy little hands on. They are also the most notorious in the forces they conceal within their structures, and for the sake of time and accuracy, you will most likely model the forces using a computer program that I will provide you at the end of this course. All you need to know is that it is a tensional structure that deflects a force, such as a tightrope when someone walks on it, or the cables on a suspension bridge.”

He wrote up the last of his notes and waited eagerly for instructions from his attractive professor. He was having a hard time thinking about shells and arches when her structures were right in front of him, waiting to be analyzed.

“So, now that you know the basics, and have no doubt some knowledge of the mathematics and the physics involved in this field, I will provide you with an examination. Consider this the culmination to your lecture. If you do not pass with a sufficiently high score, you will have to try back again six months. If you pass, you will return later today for the hands-on part of the class.” She pressed yet another button on her data pad and a new document flashed on the screen. It was pretty  simple stuff. There were four structures, each represented by a different graphic, and they were all implemented in the same building. The numbers within the graphics each represented necessary information, such as the length and width of an object, its geometry, its mass, and the loads above and below them.

“Calculate the forces being acted on the columns,  the beams, the concrete floor plate, and the shelled dome that acts as the roof of the building. You have one hour. You may use your data pad for calculations, and the engineering manual for reference. Good luck.”

It all seemed pretty simple. There were four columns, but the forces of the dome only acted on the outside two that made contact with it. They were dead loads, in that they weren’t imposed and were not temporary, so they would be very easy to calculate.

He noted the height of the columns and their specific density. He then jotted down the mass of the shell above both columns. Knowing the critical load of the column and its modulus of elasticity, and comparing those to the deflected shape of the column, he could derive the force acting down upon it. It only took him ten minutes to figure the problem out and he quickly moved on to the next structure in the building.

This time he had to calculate the force of the domed roof on the beams. This wouldn’t be difficult, but it would be a little more time consuming. First he would have to calculate the dead load of the roof itself, in pressure per square feet. It was provided that each square foot of the roof system would provide 55 pounds of dead load. Since it was assumed that no other force was acting on the system, there would be no need to derive a live load. The roof was 24 ft wide, and came in contact with the beams and the walls of the building at two different points, meaning that they each shared one half, or 12 feet worth of load. The pressure of the roof system had been provided, so with simple multiplication, Giovanni derived the pressure of the roof system as a whole. He jotted it down, next to all his calculations and moved on.

Next one was a trick question. The professor wanted Giovanni and the rest of the students to figure out the load imposed on the domed roof. This one was very easy. Since the dome lay on top of all the other structures, there was no load imposed on it. The only force exerted on the domed roof was the force it exerted down on everything else, for every action had an equal and opposite reaction.

Lastly, he had to figure out the force of all the structures on the concrete slab below. Another easy problem. The columns were the only things coming in contact with the slab. Anything being held up by the columns was going to have that force transferred onto the slab. He calculated the forces on the columns,  and multiplied by the number of columns present.

He handed his test in and went home. He was confident he had passed. An hour later he received a message over the comnet.

“Congratulations on a satisfactory score. Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty and meet me outside the lecture hall at 1400 hours.”

-------------------------------

He grabbed a quick lunch and walked casually to the lecture hall. On arrival, his teacher greeted him with a nod and motioned for him to follow.

“Uh, ma’am. Where are the rest of the students?”
“This is a one-on-one examination. Your classmates, the ones that passed at least, will be tested later today. Don’t worry, sergeant. This won’t take long.” She continued to walk at a brisk pace, and Giovanni followed her all the way to an empty warehouse. It looked like it hadn’t seen much use in some time.

“This warehouse was cleared out because the engineer who built it implemented a poor design. He failed to apply his book knowledge to real life. Real life is not a closed system. There are many outside forces that act on an erected structure.” She removed her glasses, rubbed the lenses clean on her shirt and continued her soliloquy.

“This certain person ignored those outside forces. He designed a perfect structure, given that no other forces act on it. So, during a storm the warehouse began to sway from side to side. The swaying knocked loose a beam  That beam, in turn, fell and crushed him.”

“Wow, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Gio, in the most respectable tone he could muster. “Um, anyone you knew?”

“He was actually Kalon Borden. One of the finest engineers the VE turned out, and my father.” Her facial expression was stolid. Giovanni fumbled with words, trying to think of the right thing to say.

“Don’t bother,” she said, sensing what he was trying to do. “All you have to do is get this warehouse back into shape. The army needs it to stow their surplus equipment, but they want to come back to something safe. You will be in charge of a team of five union workers. Upon completion of the project, you will pass the class.” She threw up a sloppy salute and walked away. As soon as she was out of the door, the team of five walked in.

“Okay guys. What shook that beam loose was the swaying of the building under a strong wind. This is a simple fix. We’ll attach bars at a 45 degree angle connecting the roof and the walls of the warehouse. That should take care of the swaying. Even so, the bars seemed like they weren’t attached properly. Do any of you know how the bolts were attached?”

The workers were quiet, but the one of them spoke up.

“I believes the bolts was attached to the beam in a shears configurations.”

“Okay, that will work. Are they welded in?”

“No sir, but I think that’s the reason that beam was able to wiggle lose and fall,” another worker called out, with confidence.

“I’m thinking you’re right. Okay guys, that’s what we’ll do. Attach the angular beams, one every 10 feet along the roof. On top of that, weld any of the bolts on the structural beams holding the roof up.”
The group of workers grabbed their things and went to work. Giovanni put on a hard hat and sat on a crate watching them get everything done.

“I could definitely get used to this,” he said with a sigh. He pulled out his data pad and sent a message to his professor.

The job would be done in a few hours.

The inspection could take the better part of tomorrow.

However, one thing was for sure: today had been a success. He was readier than ever for his next assignment. Two more and he would be certified.

He leaned back and got comfortable.