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Are We Now Trying To Compete With Nature?


Some say man's work cannot be on par with nature. But sometimes I feel "Is man trying to take the nature's job into his hands?"

This is because in some of the recent innovations in the last decade man has made sure he got rid of any obstacles if he had naturally and converted the surroundings to suit his needs. As a civil engineer it makes me think if this progress is for the good or bad?

Now consider the kansai airport in the Japan.  It was built in a place where none would have even dreamt of constructing anything some decades ago. It was built right on water. An artificial island was built some 3 kms away from the land. The challenges posed by nature like the clay soil strata in the sea bed, rough waves were all taken care of. This happened because the city had space constraints and needed to make an artificial island to house the airport.

an aerial view of the airport

The above example shows that man had created artificial islands to overcome some problem. But next is an example of a similar artificial island built for the bon vivant class.

The palm islands of dubai ( palm jebel ali, palm jumeirah, palm deira ) were all constructed for hotels like burj al arab and some residential blocks. This new year also saw the opening of the  luxurious five star Rixos Palm Jumeirah hotel in Dubai.

The Palm Jumeirah Islands
Rixos Palm Jumeirah hotel

And now here is another one construction... the difference here being that it has been a concept from nature!

The Nautilus House in Mexico where the house is built resembling a shell! Have a look at it and think if there are anymore limitations for engineers... This poses no harm. But I want to show you how we are now capable of imitating the Nature. 


So from these few examples itself it is evident that man is capable of delivering high standards of engineering, by replication of nature's work. Some is commendable and helps mankind in it's progress. Some just for the sake of it... for showing uniqueness and superiority. Man must know that he has certain limitations. The works like the first one is absolutely necessary and more such engineering which will help the society must be done. But the others?

This doesn't apply just to the civil engineering field. I have covered examples from my field to make you understand the idea. But man has in all fields started challenging nature. Vegetables are grown the artificial way to make profits these days. The obstacles that nature posed for us is no more an obstacle. 

If we come up with innovations to help us it is good. But we must try not to meddle with the nature too much too! What say? Just a thought... :) 


Cheers! 

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Welcome 2012!

Hello friends! 

Hope the last year was eventful and good :) I was preparing for a competitive exam and so I was irregular in here. Starting this year you'll find more regular posts coming up in this space! 

The last year saw some awesome constructions coming up. Many records were broken and new records created! 

Here is a post that i made for Crazyengineer's official blog VoiCE which lists the achievements made last year in the industry which made civil engineers proud.

Hope you enjoy it! 

Happy New Year 2012! :D

Cheers! 


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Celebrating one year of writing!



It was in February 2010 that i created this blog just out of curiosity after seeing some blogs of my friends ( harshad italiya, sahithi pallavi, sandeep, raj verma, Big K, etc., etc.)! But I never tried posting anything in here till 19th, september, 2012. That was my first attempt to see if I could write anything sensible at all. ;) 


I received the first comment in half an hour from fellow CEan raj verma and the second was my friend sai! :) Then I started coming out with simple posts which were a lot general and slowly started writing posts which involved more of civil engineering. 


Writing these technical articles had given me some confidence to try writing the civil engineering related articles for the official technical blog of crazyengineers-VoiCE. I authored around 20 articles at http://www.crazyengineers.com/author/niranjana/. It is not a major feat but one that i'm proud of. And for that opportunity I thank Big_K. :) 


Spending time with my blog made me appreciate structures and engineering further. I've learnt lots of things this one year... not just technical but also general stuff. I also made some new blogger friends and some of my friends had also started blogging by then and so I enjoyed the whole experience. :) 


With the passing time it was around May that I realised that I was confused with the purpose of the blog. So I created another blog The Civil Princess blogs here...  for all the casual postings and dedicated this blog completely for Civil Engineering. :) 


The last three months I had been away from blogging for various reasons and this blogoversary has given me an opportunity to get back to blogging and active this time.


This is the one year history of this blog and my experiences here! I thank all who have stopped by to read my blog and also encourage me. :)  


Here is a list of some of the posts that i'm proud of:


favourite blog post:  http://civilprincess.blogspot.com/2010/12/thursday-challenge-is-construction.html

best hit:  http://civilprincess.blogspot.com/2010/09/leaning-tower-of-abu-dhabi.html (even now it keeps getting a lot of traffic) 







HAPPY BIRTHDAY CIVIL EMPIRE!!! 



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5 Star!!!


The next guest post is from my sister, Madhumitha! She is a electronics engineer who blogs at http://cooltwins.wordpress.com/. she loves blogging, photography, dancing, sketching, and reading comics! she also writes about the technological news at http://www.crazyengineers.com/author/madhumita-sridhar/

Presenting to you Cooltwins!
________________________________________________________________________


Here I go again : “Chennai Rocks!!!” :) I just can’t say it the other way despite the fact that the temperatures here are killing me and the traffic is driving me crazy!!! But at the end of the day, it my very own Chennai! And we Chennai vaasis love it… :)
You want one good reason? Like how Ash says it in the L’Oreal ad, “I’ll give you five!” :p In fact its just the top five, believe me we are crazy about this superfast city for a million reasons :) But it is not humanly possible for me list them all.
So let’s get started:
The Fifth place is taken up by Mahaballipuram (or shortly called as “Mahabs” :P ). A perfect choice for a day’s visit for a family or even better, a gang of friends. It is the usual hot spot for budding photographers. The beautiful place, statues and the temples are the best for one to kick start his encounter with photography. It’s not just about Mahabs that I am talking about… it’s also about the other Temples in the city. (There is dearth for them). A must visit when one wants to get away from the hustle and bustle of life for at least an hour of peace.
The fourth place is taken up by the collage of arts that the city represents. The cultural atmosphere in the city is an amalgam of different dance forms, singing and music. People from far and wide take the pains to travel to Chennai ( and mind you, just Chennai! :p ) so as to take up a crash course on the art they want to learn. I am a classical dancer and I’ve seen dozens of people approach my dance teacher during the summer hols to get hold of the dance forms. Chennai’s yearly calendar is just not complete with out the December festival where different people showcase their talents in different forms of art during the month long festival. (Do try and make it to Chennai at least once during December. You’ll know what I’m talking about :) )
The long list of festivals that are celebrated round the year are a trade mark of Chennai. And its specialities are the nonbus or fasts and the sentiments that come attached with it. It starts with the new  Year celebrations and Pongal in January and ends with Christmas and new year eve celebration ;) All kinds of festivals are celebrated with equal enthusiasm and of course Diwali tops them all. The really long list of festivals does give the kids a reason to celebrate, of course it the holidays that accompanies them :) For that reson they are given the Third spot :p
The second spot goes to the Shopping and hang out points in the city. The city offers you so much variety in anything you would like to purchase. You want a saree? Feel free to chose from the wide varieties from a cotton saree though designer sarees to pattu sarees. Just hit the shopping hotspot of Chennai ( T.Nagar / Panagal Park) you can never say you never got what you wanted. They have almost everything. And hi-fi malls are mushrooming across the city at a crazy rate. So in short you can not get bored in Chennai. If you still fell so, you are at the wrong corner of the city.
And the coveted first spot goes to FOOD!!! The variety at Chennai from Dosas, Idlis, Pongal to Upma are the standard breakfast items. One can just not stay away from them as long as they are in Chennai. In fact a guy won a Cookery contest in U.S.A I guess (not sure though) by cooking the humble Upma! See how they rock!!! :) Even in a single dosa you can choose between various versions of it.


the above collage shows (in order) the Mahabalipuram, Sky lighting up with crackers,  Mylapore temple, Napiers bridge, rail lines, Express avenue (mall), Lamps lit to celebrate diwali, Margazhi season concert, Bharathanatyam dancers.

Image courtesy: Balaji maheshwar, B.Kannan, RajaN, Abhinaya, Kals Pics


See… So in short, “I’m from Chennai and that automatically makes me 10 times cooler than you!” (Just kidding :) ) 

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Dear Niru!


The third guest post is from my friend Anuraadha! She is an enthusiastic civil engineer who aspires to do her masters in architecture and become a professional architect! She blogs at http://coolgirl-anu.blogspot.com/. She loves to sing and listen to songs! :) 

Presenting to you my friend! 

___________________________________________________________________

This is for one of my close buddy who is celebrating here blogoversary on 19th of September.
She is a crazy civil engineer who is aspiring to do MBA in IIM-A. The viewers of her blog might know her as Civil Princess, but to me she is Niru( that’s how I call her).
She is  pursuing her final year in Civil. I have been knowing her past 4 years and she remains the same. That makes you special, young lady! J She is an intelligent,shrewd,friendly and sweet person. She has all qualities to get into IIM-A. The one thing which makes her special is she spreads positivity throughout. She tries to correct her mistake when told. We have shared all kinds of emotions!! She is one person who has heights of belongingness.
               
Her blog is mostly concentrated on trends in civil, and social issues. One of my favourite article of hers is the tensegrity structures which she posted for the VOICE in crazyengineers.
Capital gate- Abu Dhabi, Khansai Airport, Green terraces are worth mentioning .









Looking forward for more posts.
Happy blogoversary!!



BEST

 
 !!











cheers!


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Sustainable farming with the use of Civil engineering

The first Guest Post is by my friend, fellow CEan and blogger Ishan topre! He is an enthusiastic and Crazy Mechanical Engineer who also enjoys writing  he tracks the technological trends in mechanicl engineering for the Crazyengineers official blog VoiCE. He also has his own blog Kautilya's Diary  where he expresses his thoughts.

presenting to you his article... :)

______________________________________________________________________


From the dawn of human civilization, if we have seen an almost continuous development in any science then it is perhaps architecture and structural sciences. If we take a look at the Stone Age houses or Egyptian pyramids, or Assyrian civilization or the Aryan Civilization we might be surprised that every human settlement and every generation of that settlement have continuously added to this branch of engineering in some way or the other. However in saying all this, I am neither praising civil engineering nor do I intend compare it with other sciences. My sole point of discussion is that, it is high time that we try to engage more of civil technology in farming, thereby making farming a sustainable trade for our society. 

There is a concept called natural cooling and climate maintenance. Nowadays we also have many of the buildings constructed that way. Mankind has been making advances in technology in general and every technocrat on this earth knows what the concept of green house is. It is thus evident that we combine these civil sciences with the technology for conserving plants and crops.


The green houses which we talk about mostly range anywhere between INR 15,000 (~$334) to 200,000 (~$4450) that too for a small room sized green house. The total cost of covering a considerable part of a plot, scale up astronomically high. It is thus the need of hour that we construct cheaper alternatives of green houses which can help the countries having agriculture as their satellite industry. It is not even as if we have to invent something new. We already know it. The concept that I am talking about is to find out different materials which can change their thermal conductivity as per the weather outside.

Presently we have green houses located at places where ample sunlight is available. Moreover, the coverings on them are mostly limited to plastic glazed coverings, the reason being they transmit photo-synthetically active radiation effectively (PAR). While normally people do not go for glass glazed coverings only because of the cost factor involved. As a counter measure, Fiber reinforced polyester is used, but we can still have better varieties of green house coverings and a very little is being done in this field. Due to lack of research our choice is narrowed down to five prominent materials namely Acrylic, Polycarbonate, fiber-glass Polyethylene film and polyvinyl chloride film.

We do not necessarily have to follow the example of Mr. Chester Baker who donated a green house to University of Missouri. Rather, if we direct our efforts to develop low cost alternatives and widen our existing range of materials we can really help the Farmers and thereby hugely contribute to society. The research of civil engineering out of the normal construction business would probably bring out another green revolution. 

cheers! 

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4 guest posts coming up!

Monday is Civil Empire's blogoversary! so to celebrate it i've asked my friends to publish guest posts in here. :) i'll be posting the four guest posts today and tomorrow :)

hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as i did :)

cheers!


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here the flights land amidst water!!!

I think there will be no limits to innovations in civil engineering. Here is one mega innovation where the airport is constructed in the water!


"Need is indeed the mother of all innovations." Japan now has around four airports built of shore to cater to the demands also taking into consideration  the public convenience. 


Have a look at this picture.




This is the Kansai airport located on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka Bay in Japan, off the shore of the cities of Sennan and Izumisano.
The kansai airport was the first of this kind. The airport was constructed at some distance from the main land on an artificially constructed man-made island. The need for this offshore airport was mainly attributed to the developments in the Osaka to regain the economic power it had lost to Tokyo in the last few decades. The airport had threats from the typhoons and earthquakes. So the engineers had taken all this into consideration and designed this airport. The airport of size 4km by 2.5km was suggested. The terminal here spanning 1.7km is the longest terminal. 



   


Terminal Building




Sky Gate Bridge


The sea wall was made of rocks and tetrahedral concrete blocks. The island was made by filling 21,000,000 m3 of landfill obtained by excavating three mountains. The technical problem here was the soil below water was alluvial clay so the sinking of structure would be more. So the engineers decided to use sand piles. These sand would absorb the moisture of the clay. Though it had been filled more than required engineers predicted some sinking to occur. But here the sinking was more than expected leading to extra costs. It sank for 8m. The engineers suggested sliding joints for the aseismic deign. This worked most effectively. It was evident form the results obtained when japan faced the Kobe earthquake on 17 January 1995. The airport remained undamaged. The next test came in 1998 when the airport faced a typhoon with wind speeds of up to 200 km/h. The airport survived without any damage. The only connection of this island to the mainland was the sky gate bridge. It was completed on 1990 with a cost of dollar one billion. This trussed bridge carried the railway in lower level and the motor way in the upper level. 








The airport faced peak time traffic limits problems. so in 2003, the airport authorities suggested the construction of another runway with a terminal (4,000 m long). The second terminal was opened on 2 August 2007. 


Construction time-line:-
1987-construction started
1989-sea wall construction completed. 
1990-a 3km bridge was completed to connect the island to the mainland (rinku town)
1991-terminal building construction commenced
1994-airport opened.
2007-second runway opened. 






American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) selected Kansai International Airport in 2001 as one of the 10 civil engineering achievements. 


The techniques applied here with some modifications to prevent the excess sinking was applied in the construction of more airports like this which were New Kitakyushu Airport, Kobe Airport, and ChÅ«bu Centrair International Airport.


Thats how the need created a path for the wonder and this wonder was the inspired and made way for many more such structures! :)




Cheers!









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Hiya :)

hello guys,

i was away from blogging for some time since i was busy with exams. now its over and it's time i spend some time for my blog :)

i have some posts lined up for civil empire. hope it will interest you guys.

i also have another announcement to make. civil empire has conquered another province. :D in simple words i've started another blog :p this blog will henceforth be devoted only for civil engineering related posts.

all the casual posts will henceforth be posted in Civilprincess blogs here... :)
hope you guys enjoy the articles at both the blogs! :D

Update: i've moved all the casual posts to the wordpress blog. and only the civil related posts remain in civil empire! :)


cheers!


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kudos to the budding engineers!

hello folks :D


it's a long time since I've made my last post. so here is one simple but marvelous engineering i recently learnt.


i had been to attend a civil engineering tech fest at IIT Madras (India) last week end. every year during this festival the students make it a point to make some engineering project which is not easy and display it. this year's marvel (the name they give the projects) was a inflatable rubber dam.


this inflatable rubber dam is just a tube like structure made of a hard rubber like material. the material is a multi layer fabric made synthetic fibre which may be rubberised on one or both sides and possibly coated with a plastic film. they are made to a cylinder like structure after initial scrubbing to make the material hold tight when glue is applied. then the edges are firmly stuck and pressed to remove any locked air bubbles. then the circular shapes of the same material is cut and pasted to the sides. now this is the basic structure of the inflatable dam.


this bag like structure is then filled with air or water or both. there is an opening on top for this purpose.this structure is then anchored to the base of the dam. in this case the students used glue as it was sufficient for the size they were building. when the air is filled it inflates and holds itself to the sill of the dam. it hence is capable of working as a weir or barrier to water flow.


it has its own advantages and disadvantages. being cheap, easy to construct are its advantages. the disadvantages are the facts that they are vulnerable to damage by people, life span of 20 years.








a graphical picture showing a rubber dam acting as a barrier. 






a rubber dam.

it was an awesome effort by the civil engineering students of IIT. cheers to them :D





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