Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Civil engineering/Archive 2

request for membership
Hi every one first of all I want to be a member of this group but i don't know how. I am a civil engineer and i want to contribute something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abuff (talk • contribs) 09:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Welcome to the project Abuff, to join simply add your name to the list of members, to do this simply enter # ~ and then some text describing yourself to the bottom of the list.  The # will automatically number the list entry and the ~, known as four tildes, will automatically enter your name and links to your talk and contribution pages.  It is good practice to add these four tildes to the end of every post you make to talk pages so that people can easily see who has written what.


 * As far as the Civil Engineering Wikiproject goes we value any contributions on any topic relevent to the profession, you can find a list of topics that are below required size listed under stubs or start class articles on the assessment box (to the right of the assessment section) on the main project page or feel free to create your own article if we do not have it already. Do not be worried about being bold you will always find other editors who will answer your questions and help to build your articles.  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me at my talk page.  Cheers Dumelow (talk) 12:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Construction
Hi. Can I just ask if anyone would be interested in joining WikiProject Construction if it was created since it is a proposed daughter project on both WikiProject Architecture and WikiProject Engineering. Thanks. Tbo 157  (talk)  10:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've proposed this on the WikiProject proposal page. WP:COUNCIL/P Mr. Welsh (talk) 14:25, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Your help please
What ho, good engineering folk, I trust all is well with you. May I ask your help in expanding the stub Saltash Tunnel please? It is, apparently, the only 3 lane road tunnel in Europe, and its construction and maintenance have been the matter of some controversy, including a parliamentary debate. In part, at least, this controversy appears to arise from the contractors disregarding local knowledge of the site geology. I will do some expansion of the article, but would appreciate the contributions of editors who have a better knowledge of engineering issues than me. Thanks, DuncanHill 20:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have (belatedly) expanded this article so that it now has info on the consultant, contractor and so forth as well as a description of the problems it has suffered from. That's as much info as I could find on it at the moment - Dumelow (talk) 15:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Euler-Bernoulli beam equation: Beam_examples
The beam examples on Euler-Bernoulli beam equation contain some typo's and perhaps errors. To me they seem to be quite important for structural engineering (in the good old days of the slide rule you had to memorize them). Can anybody have a thorough look at them? Also references are lacking at the moment. -- Crowsnest (talk) 14:45, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * More notifications on errors have been made. If these errors are not removed and the examples are not provided with reliable sources, I will remove this section. Crowsnest (talk) 08:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I moved the "Beam examples" section to talk page of the article, in the hope that someone will clean them up. Crowsnest (talk) 08:38, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Issues with bridge types
A recent discussion concerning the inclusion of Bridge of the Americas in several of the "longest bridge by type" lists has raised some concerns about how the construction of these bridges is characterized. The particular problem class is a group of truss bridges where the center span deck is suspended from a truss arch which then extends beyond the center span piers in an apparent cantilever configuration. The largest example I found is the Francis Scott Key Bridge (Baltimore), which I've seen described as a continuous truss, a through arch, a cantilever arch, and all of the above; there appear to be at least five similar examples in List of the largest arch bridges, including the Bridge of the Americas.

I'm not sure I'm characterizing these bridges correctly, but more to the point, we aren't consistent here in Wikipedia either. The FSK bridge article describes it as a continuous truss, but the bridge is on the longest arch list. Neither continuous truss bridge or arch bridge addresses this kind of structure. I think I could add the material, but I would rather have a civil engineer address the matter first. Mangoe (talk) 17:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Bridges can be very complex structures. There's no reason to think that a bridge can't be a combination of all the above.  Having now looked at the article, at Structurae, and at some websites they each point to, I've described this bridge in the article as "continuous truss arch bridge with suspended plate girder deck", and I don't think it's a complete description.  Depends on what sort of "continuous truss" the non-arch sections are, y'see. - Denimadept (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * NOTE: I'm not a CE, just a bridge fan. - Denimadept (talk) 19:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The footnote number 1 in the Key Bridge article gives an excellent description of how this bridge is a combination of types. The referenced page says "The structure combines the behaviors of an arch, truss and cantilever. With no expansion joints, this bridge is the second longest continuous steel truss bridge in the United States."


 * Truss bridges will always be subject to this diffculty in classification. Many people see a multiple span truss and immediately say "Cantiliver!" When the truss is shaped like an arch, they will immediately say "Arch!". However, the Key Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas are two good examples of why Verifiability is important in these articles. The articles will need to be addressed one at a time.


 * Maybe there should be a category created for bridges where the classification is unverified/disputed. This would flag the articles for discussion. Then engineers in the various Wikiprojects (CE, Bridges, etc.) could join in on the talk. - PennySpender1983 (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Much of the problem revolves around the Lists of Longest Spans by Type. I suppose for starters we could create List of longest continuous truss spans and move the FSK and others into that list. We really need someone who understands these things to talk about these non-arch arch bridges in the continuous truss article, though. Mangoe (talk) 00:05, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I have written a new article, List of longest continuous truss bridge spans. Please take a look. - PennySpender1983 (talk) 20:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  22:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

NY highway sufficiency database
May help with for instance..Pavement engineering ... Transport infrastructure... Transportation engineering...New York highway articles

The information which has arrived is very full and detailed. It is the engineering report of which routes are in New York are....in which region, county, and control segment, each item of information in the data base pertains to a specific highway length between beginning and ending mile posts on that segment. Residency cods are included regarding highway maintenance. It is noted whether that segment is classed as divided or undivided, number of lanes in both directions, pavement width, shoulder width, shoulder type, surface content, surface condition, surface type, median width, median type, base type, sub-base type, terrain type, area type, culture type, percent parking, passing sight distance, per cent trucks, traffic count year, design hour volume, Average annual daily traffic, functional class, highway control code, year scored, year last work, access control to highway, adjusted rated capacity, national highway system principal arterial system, surface type from 1981 to 2006, reference marker, tandem truck designation, work type, pavement type. So this is the first database, the two files to explain the above glossary type terminology and expand on all the varieties of each of the above. There is also included a second database in the information sent named the Landmark table, which refers to the route, its letter, its region, county, control segment or county order control, beginning and end mile posts, landmark and reference marker number. So, therefore this is cool engineering information for the entire state. This info can be shared with whoever is working on NY road articles. The 2006 instruction pdf file is 1,550 Kb in length and the Highway sufficiency table pdf is 139,069 kb file which explain the data contents. The data is compiled with Microsoft access with the 2006 final landmark table being a *.ldb file (MS access) is 1 kb, the 2006 database table with all the inventory is a 11,892 kb *.mdb (ms Access ) which can be transferred into excel or into an html table. There is also information in the pdf files about the types of distress the engineering department looks for in highway repairs.

For abbreviated examples see... Talk:New York State Route 100 Talk:New York State Route 343

Please contact me for more informationSriMesh | talk  05:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 649 articles are assigned to this project, of which 134, or 20.6%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:



If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Help with Severn Barrage
Is anyone able to take a look at the Severn Barrage article. It covers an important and topical issue, but the article is stuffed full of cleanup tags. Attention from those with engineering, environmental, economic or other relevant interests, or those who can give editing help to bring it within the Manual of Style, would be great.&mdash; Rod talk 13:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like you all are doing a great job working to improve it. I took a cursory look and noticed a possible issue with the "Benefits and disadvantages" section, so I commented on that at the talk page, though the comment there could be vice-versa (which came first, the chicken or the egg?). Will try to take a closer look soon. Zue Jay (talk)  02:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Leonardo da Vinci peer review
Any comments at Peer review/Leonardo da Vinci/archive3 would be most appreciated. It's a vital article, so it would be nice to get as many views as possible. Thanks. Papa November (talk) 08:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Priority vs. Importance
Hey all (assuming there are still active members of this project!)! I was hoping to call attention to the "Importance" rating we place on talkpage wikiproject tags (also see here). I was wondering what folks think of changing this instead to "Priority" rating? "Importance" seems to imply that a topic is somehow more important than another, whereas "Priority" implies more the Project's assessment of where focus should be. Does this make any sense? Does it particularly matter? Thoughts? Zue Jay (talk)  00:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There does seem to be an absence of participants to this wikiproject! I agree that it seems better to have a priority rating than an importance rating as all articles here are useful and important to someone but some will obviously be important to a wider audience and that these should be identified so that our work can be directed more effectively - Dumelow (talk) 17:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for CE
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)