Principles of Structural Design: Wood, Steel, and Concrete

Anyone involved with structural design, whether a student or a practicing engineer, must maintain a functional understanding of wood, steel, and concrete design principles. In covering all of these materials, Principles of Structural Design: Wood, Steel, and Concrete fills a gap that exists in the instructional resources. It provides a self-contained authoritative source that elaborates on the most recent practices together with the code-connected fundamentals that other books often take for granted.

Dr. Ram Gupta, a professional engineer, provides readers with insights garnered over a highly active 40-year international career. Organized for ready reference, the book is divided into four main sections.

• Part I covers loads, load combinations, and specific code requirements for different types of loads. It elaborates on the LRFD (load resistance factor design) philosophy and the unified approach to design.
• Part II covers sawn lumber, structural glued laminated timber, and structural composite lumber. It reviews tension, compression, and bending members, as well as the effects of column and beam stabilities and combined forces.
• Part III considers the steel design of individual tension, compression, and bending members. Additionally, it provides designs for braced and unbraced frames. Open-web steel joists and joist girders are included here as they form a common type of flooring system for steel-frame buildings.
• Part IV analyzes the design of reinforced beams and slabs, shear and torsion, compression and combined compression, and flexure in relation to basic concrete structures.

This textbook presents the LRFD approach for designing structural elements according to the latest codes. Written for architecture and construction management majors, it is equally suitable for civil and structural engineers. 

Ram S. Gupta holds a master of engineering degree from IIT, Roorkee, India, and a PhD from Polytechnic University, New York. He is a registered professional engineer in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Dr. Gupta has 40 years of experience working on projects in the United States, Australia, India, and Liberia (West Africa), and is currently working as a professor of engineering at Roger Williams University (RWU), Bristol, Rhode Island. He has been a full-time faculty member at RWU since 1981. He was a rotary scholar professor at Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal, and a Fulbright scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. Dr. Gupta is president of Delta Engineers, Inc., an Rhode Island-based consulting company, specializing in structural and water resource disciplines. Besides contributing to a very large number of research papers, he has authored two very successful books: Hydrology and Hydraulic Systems, 3rd edition (Waveland Press, Long Grove, IL, 2008), Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science, 2nd edition (ABS Consulting, Rockville, MD, 2004), and Principles of Structural Design: Wood, Steel, and Concrete (Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 2010).