Most of the time, our building beams are slender enough that shear deformation is an afterthought. We worry about flexural stiffness, slap on a deflection limit, and move on. But as soon as you start working with deep transfer girders, perimeter spandrels, or short plate girders, ignoring shear deformation can quietly under-predict drift and member demand.
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If you’re a structural engineer in Canada, you’ve stared at this equation more times than you can count:
$$S = I_s[S_s(C_b C_w C_s C_a) + S_r]$$It’s the backbone of our snow load calculations, a formula we trust to keep our buildings standing through the harshest Canadian winters. It’s important to remember this detailed formula is from NBCC Part 4; the approach for simpler structures is different, as we’ve covered in our guide to wind and snow loads in Part 4 vs. Part 9.
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The first heavy, wet snow of the season is plastering everything in sight, and you get that familiar call from an architect: “We’re looking at a large, flat roof on this new project. What kind of snow load do we need?”
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Solar panels, architectural sunshades, and complex multi-level rooflines are no longer the exception; they’re the norm in modern Canadian building design. While they score points for energy efficiency and visual appeal, they also create a minefield of unexpected snow and ice loads for structural engineers.
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You’re finalizing a set of drawings, cross-checking load cases against the National Building Code, and wondering if you’ve caught every little detail. The NBCC is a dense document, and its companion, the Structural Commentaries, is packed with the “why” behind the rules. It’s in those commentaries that we find the nuances that can make or break a design, or at least save us a headache during a plan check.
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So, you’ve just been handed a project with a decently sized retaining wall, and it’s in a location with some seismic kick. Immediately, you know that your standard static analysis isn’t going to cut it. The response of a retaining wall to seismic loading is a complex soil-structure interaction problem, and figuring out the right approach can be daunting. This is a classic example of where we move beyond simplified prescriptive rules and into the world of engineered precision using Part 4 principles.
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Canadian projects see everything from heavy snowfalls to strong winds, so our designs constantly have to stand up to the elements. The National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) gives us the rulebook, but how we apply those rules can differ significantly, especially when we’re talking about Part 4 (Structural Design) versus Part 9 (Housing and Small Buildings).
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Welcome to my structural engineering blog! I’m Arun Kishore, a Structural Engineer based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. This blog is a space where I plan to document my continuous learning journey, share insights, and discuss the diverse world of structural engineering – from codes and standards to design procedures, innovative ideas, and material-specific topics.
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