Practical Engineering

Almost all dams need a way to release excess water when the reservoir is full. Although many dams use uncontrolled spillways, gated spillways provide more control over the flow, allowing us to build smaller, more cost-effective structures. There are countless arrangements of mechanical devices that have been used across the world and throughout history to manage the flow of water. But, modern engineering has coalesced to variations on only a few different kinds of gates.

This event highlights the need for making critical substations more secure and also making the grid more robust so that someone can’t rob tens of thousands of people of their lights, heat, comfort, and livelihood for four days with just a few well-placed bullets.

Over the years, engineers have come up with a lot of creative ways to mitigate the settlement of heavy stuff on soft soils, but one of those solutions seems so simple that it’s almost unbelievable: just make embankments less heavy.

Last August, a flood took out the aging water system in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving nearly everyone in the City without water. Only a few months later, arctic weather broke so many pipes in the city that residents again lost access to water, some for nearly two weeks, continuing one of the worst water crises in American history.

The basics of fluvial geomorphology (the science behind the shape of rivers)

From preconstruction costs to inflation to unexpected site conditions, there are a lot of reasons construction budgets rarely align with construction costs. Let's talk about it!

The unintended consequences of trying to change the course of rivers.

On the evening of Friday, February 3, 2023, 38 of 149 cars of a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Five of the derailed cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a hazardous material that built up pressure in the resulting fires, eventually leading Norfolk Southern to vent and burn it in a bid to prevent an explosion. The ensuing fireball and cloud brought the normally unseen process of hazardous cargo transportation into a single chilling view, and the event became a lightning rod of controversy over rail industry regulations, federal involvement in chemical spills, and much more.

It turns out that plenty of types of infrastructure, especially those that have serious implications for public safety, are equipped with instruments to track their performance over time and even save lives by providing an early warning if something is going wrong. Engineers keep an eye on strain, vibrations, temperature, pressure, tilt, flow rate, and more to make sure that structures behave like they were designed and to keep people safe from disaster.

On September 13, 2018, a pipeline crew in the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts was hard at work replacing an aging cast iron natural gas line with a new polyethylene pipe. By the end of the day, over a hundred structures would be damaged by fire and explosions, several homes would be completely destroyed, 22 people (including three firefighters) would be injured, and one person would be dead.

Many cities across the world maximize the use of valuable land on earth’s surface by taking advantage of the space underneath for bypassing floods. This video discusses some of the challenges and solutions to these massive projects.

Unlike NASA, which spends years in planning and engineering, SpaceX uses rapid development cycles and full-scale tests to work toward its eventual goals. They push their hardware to the limit to learn as much as possible, and we get to follow along. They’re betting it will pay off to develop fast instead of carefully. This video compares the Stage 0 launch pad to the historic pad 39A.

It might surprise you to learn that there are more than 18,000 desalination plants operating across the globe. But, those plants provide less than a percent of global water needs even though they consume a quarter of all the energy used by the water industry. The oceans are a nearly unlimited resource of water with this seemingly trivial caveat, which is that the water is just a little bit salty. It’s totally understandable to wonder why that little bit of salt is such an enormous obstacle.

Tanker truck fires at bridges happen rarely, but when they do, they often lead to a collapse or at least a replacement. How do engineers characterize bridge fires, and should bridges be better protected against them?

Current doesn’t flow to the ground; it flows through the ground and back up. If there is electricity moving into the ground from an energized conductor, go back to the source of that conductor and see what’s happening. For the grid, it’s probably a transformer or electrical generator, in either case, a simple coil of wire. And, the electrical current flowing out of the coil has to be equal to the electrical current flowing into it, whether that current is coming from one of the other phases, a neutral line, or an electrode buried in the ground.

It takes a lot of big tools to build the roads, dams, sewage lift stations, and every other part of the constructed environment. To me, there’s almost nothing more fun than watching something get built, and that’s made all the better when you know what all those machines do.

I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!

One statistician famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” And even something as simple as the flow of water into the soil has so many complexities to keep track of. Like most answers to simple questions in engineering and in life: the answer is that it’s complicated.

I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!

In the 19th century, railway engineering was all about how to build railroads. Modern rail engineering focuses on getting the most out of the system. It might not look like much when you see a train passing by, but a huge amount of research, testing, and engineering went into the shape of those rails and wheels.

I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!

Original Title: Why There's a Legal Price for a Human Life Comparing costs and safety is an enormous challenge. On one side, you have dollars, and on the other, you have people. Sometimes you need a conversion factor. It sounds morbid, but it’s necessary for good decision-making to put a dollar price on the value of a human life.

The series finale of the new wastewater lift station. Hope you've enjoyed the ride!

A lot of the engineering decisions that get made in railroading have to do with energy.