Cantilever retaining wall stability: overturning, sliding and bearing
The three IBC §1807.2.3 stability checks with Rankine active pressure, when to count passive resistance at the toe and when to throw it away, and a 10 ft wall worked through every force, moment arm and toe pressure.
Steel · AISC 360-22Steel column flexural buckling: AISC 360-22 §E3, worked
Effective length, slenderness, the elastic buckling stress Fe, and the switch between the inelastic and elastic Fcr equations, for a 14 ft W10x33 checked step by step to φPn and Pn/Ω.
Snow · ASCE 7-22Flat roof snow load vs minimum snow load: the two 0.7 factors that get conflated
ASCE 7-22 has a 0.7 inside the flat-roof snow formula and a 0.7 in the ASD load combinations — and they are not the same factor. Applying both to the minimum snow load undershoots a design load by nearly a third. Where each 0.7 belongs, why pm is its own load case, and a worked example of the error.
Seismic · ASCE 7-22Multi-period vs two-period response spectrum: which one, and when
ASCE 7-22 introduced the multi-period response spectrum, but the familiar SDS/SD1 two-period spectrum didn't go away. When each is permitted, why the multi-period spectrum spikes at short periods in the Central and Eastern U.S., and the hybrid approach the ASCE 7-28 committee chairs recommend.
Practice · AICan ChatGPT do structural calculations?
An honest answer, from someone building calculation software: no — not for numbers you stamp. What the published trials show about LLM reliability on indeterminate structures, where language models genuinely help an engineering practice, and what reproducibility means for professional liability.