Civil Engineering Seminar: Prof. Michael D. Engelhardt, UT Austin

Description

The Department of Civil Engineering kicks off the fall seminar series by welcoming Prof. Michael D. Engelhardt from UT Austin to give a talk titled, "Structural Fire Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities."

The talk will address the growing interest in transforming US practices for building fire safety from a prescriptive-based to a performance-based approach. This interest is being driven by the need to reduce human and economic losses from fire; to reduce the high cost of building fire safety; and to accommodate the increasing complexity, size and architectural diversity of buildings. Structural engineers will likely play an increasingly important role in this process in the future, by developing engineered approaches for structural fire safety. This presentation will examine, in a broad manner, the fire problem in the US and the role of the structural engineer in solving these problems, both at present and in the future.