Structural Engineering Musings from Puerto Rico

This summer, I had the pleasure of visiting Puerto Rico.  Although I was on vacation, I couldn't help but see structural engineering all around me.  I thought I'd share some of my observations with you.  My first observation involves this open air steel structure in a park next to the beach.  

This is an example of a structure that might qualify as an open building because it appears to have more than 80% of each wall open.  Anyone know the wind speed you'd need to design for in Puerto Rico?  You can find it in ASCE 7:  Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures.  I'll just say it's quite a bit higher than out here in California.  That may not be surprising given it's location, but what might surprise you is that their Maximum Considered Earthquake ground motions are slightly over twice what they are here in Fresno.  Okay, so back to this structure, does anyone notice what is wrong with it?  I'll give you a hint in the next picture.

Most of the columns and base plates were nearly fully rusted out.  It appears the vertical loads are being transferred through the concrete shell rather than the steel beams as it was designed.  This highlights an important point.  It is critical to protect steel members from moisture, particularly in exposed structures, and especially in marine environments.

This next photo stopped me in my tracks.  I haven't run any calculations, but my engineering judgement says those columns probably have too long of an unbraced length to provide sufficient stability, which in necessary to develop adequate strength.

This brings up a couple of thoughts.  First, our main objective as structural engineers is to design buildings that are safe for their occupants, but it is also important that the public feels safe.  I.e., even if this were to pencil out to be sufficiently strong, it certainly doesn't instill confidence.  Second, in California, scaffolding design is governed by the Department of Industrial Relations and OSHA (and possibly others).  Their scaffolding requirements can be found at these websites in case you are interested: https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/1637.html and https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=standards&p_id=10752.

The highlight of the Bacardi Factory Tour was the Visitor Pavillion with its stunning concrete open patio structure.  The architect designed it to appear as a bat in mid flight, which you can clearly see from the angle of the photo below.  This design of this complex structural form would likely require the use of structural engineering finite element software to analyze, such as RISA-3D.

And lastly, the next time someone comments about how long the high speed rail project is taking, think of the gated city of old San Juan.  These massive walls of the city and enclosed fortresses were built over a period of 150 years, but when they were completed they were a military engineering masterpiece.