Heather Sustersic is a Project Engineer with Providence Engineering Corporation and former adjunct faculty member of the Architectural Engineering Department at Penn State University. She currently serves as a voting member of the TMS 402/602 Structural Members and Reinforcement and Connectors Subcommittees. (heathers@proveng.com)
On June 13, 2018, at approximately 10:00 PM, an EF-2 tornado passed over Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, causing an estimated $18,000,000 in property damages and severely impacting commercial and retail buildings within its 600-foot-wide (183 meters) by 2.9-mile-long (4.7 kilometers) path (Figure 1). Losses to affected buildings ranged from complete or partial collapse to superficial damage to the fenestration. …
The author’s “Masonry Education Survey,” administered in October 2018, sought to answer two overarching questions: 1) are industry practitioners satisfied with the masonry design knowledge that graduating structural engineers bring with them into the workforce, and 2) what aspects of masonry design are most important for graduating structural engineers to master. This survey elicited passionate responses from engineers, architects, contractors, suppliers, instructors, and industry representatives involved in the design, specifying, installation, and/or manufacturing of masonry systems for buildings. This article expands on material previously presented at the 13th North American Masonry Conference, with additional survey results gathered through September 2019. …