NEWS FROM THE USA
INDUSTRY NEWS TRENDS
NEWS FROM THE USA
A family journey through steel
By Amanuel Gebremeskel , The ‘ roving engineer ’
I have been doing a great deal of travelling over the past six months . One of my objectives has been to study how steel has been used over time and space in various modes of transportation . I ’ m certainly not the first person in my family to be obsessed with steel and travel .
My grandfather , pictured here in the early 40s with his steel clad Fiat 508 Balilla , spent much of his years setting up a regional transportation network , primarily to move steel around .
Since his time the car remains an important means of travel . The picture below is of an elaborate stainless steel framed Audi exhibit at a recent Las Vegas convention that I attended . The main distinction now is that most all of the cars on show did not require drivers . Had he been alive to witness this grandpa would be floored !
All of these driverless cars are bound to revolutionise the world in yet unforeseen ways . Not only will steel be used to frame the cars but also their housing , bridges , and ports if one day they levitate to avoid traffic . It so happens that my own role at the Institute will be to provide easy-to-use design standards and solvers – such as the SAISC eToolkit – to allow designers and engineers to freely imagine and implement novel ways of travel .
We live in a thoroughly globalised world . At times this can be frightening and at other times totally exhilarating . In many ways lifestyles around the world have converged and without doubt one of these is the way in which we use steel to facilitate travel in general .
My grandfather ’ s daughter , my own mother , continued the legacy of promoting the next generation of travel and spent three decades of her life helping to build a successful airline . As a child , travelling through airports was a familiar scene to me . However the one major change that I have witnessed in my life involves the evolution of the framing system for most airports from concrete to steel .
The magnificent use of structural steel to frame the O . R . Tambo International Airport is but one example of this incredible migration to steel to house airline passengers .
Steel Construction Vol . 40 No . 1 2016 11