Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
After four years use in the class room, the author has decided that the arrangement of the chapters could be improved and as he wished to include some additional material in the book, he has taken this opportunity to change the order of presentation of the different topics. The whole book has received careful revision and several of the chapters have been partially rewritten. A new chapter on highway bridges has been added together with a reprint of the Specifications for Steel Highway Bridges of the State Highway Department of Ohio. About half of the figures in the book have been redrawn and a number of new figures added and such errors as have been discovered in the text have been corrected.
From the PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
The object sought in this book is to collect from the many larger and more exhaustive works on structural steel design, those parts which are applicable to simple structures, and which can be taken up in technical schools in the limited time usually allotted to the subject; and at the same time, to show by general cases and specific examples how the simple laws of statics may be applied to the details of steel structures with the object of producing details which are in accord with the stresses they have to transmit.
It is presumed that the student has already finished a course in stresses, and little time is given here to the methods of calculating the primary stresses in structures.
An effort has been made to make the nomenclature, throughout, conform to that used in "Stresses in Structures," by Prof. A. H. Heller, and a table is given so that the meaning of any letter or character in any formula can be at once determined by reference to it. In some cases where reference is made to another book, and a formula is taken bodily from it, the nomenclature of the original author is retained and the meaning of the letters given in connection.
Cross references to other articles in this book are indicated by figures in parentheses giving the article number, thus (14). References to other works on the subject are given in foot notes.
The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. C. C. Heller for the privilege of using various manuscript notes and sketches, left at his death by Prof. A. H. Heller, which have formed the basis of many of the articles in this book.
It is hoped that by the illustrations given and the methods employed, the reasons will be made apparent for many of the details commonly employed in structural work, and which are many times put in by "rule of thumb " and too often without due consideration of the stresses they have to carry.
