This connection design tool kit for students is based on the
original steel sculpture designed by Duane S. Ellifritt, P.E.,
Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the University
of Florida. The tool kit includes this teaching guide,
a 3D CAD file of the steel sculpture, and a shear connection
calculator tool. The teaching guide contains drawings and
photographs of each connection depicted on the steel sculpture,
the CAD file is a 3D AutoCAD® model of the steel
sculpture with complete dimensions and details, and the calculator
tool is a series of MathCAD® worksheets that
enables the user to perform a comprehensive check of all
required limit states.
The tool kit is intended as a supplement to, not a replacement
for, the information and data presented in the American
Institute of Steel Construction’s Manual of Steel
Construction, Load & Resistance Factor Design, Third Edition,
hereafter, referred to as the AISC Manual. The goal of
the tool kit is to assist students and educators in both learning
and teaching basic structural steel connection design by
visualization tools and software application.
All information and data presented in any and all parts of
the teaching tool kit are for educational purposes only.
Although the steel sculpture depicts numerous connections,
it is by no means all-inclusive. There are many ways to
connect structural steel members together.
In teaching engineering students in an introductory course
in steel design, often the topic of connections is put off until
the end of the course if covered at all. Then with the crush
of all the other pressures leading up to the end of the semester,
even these few weeks get squeezed until connections are
lucky to be addressed for two or three lectures. One reason
for slighting connections in beginning steel design, other
than time constraints, is that they are sometimes viewed as
a “detailing problem” best left to the fabricator. Or, the mistaken
view is taken that connections get standardized, especially
shear connections, so there is little creativity needed
in their design and engineers view it as a poor use of their
time. The AISC Manual has tables and detailing information
on many standard types of connections, so the process
is simplified to selecting a tabulated connection that will
carry the design load. Many times, the engineer will simply
indicate the load to be transmitted on the design drawings
and the fabricator will select an appropriate connection.
Yet connections are the glue that holds the structure
together and, standardized and routine as many of them may
seem, it is very important for a structural engineer to understand
their behavior and design. Historically, most major
structural failures have been due to some kind of connection.
failure. Connections are always designed as planar, twodimensional
elements, even though they have definite threedimensional
behavior. Students who have never been
around construction sites to see steel being erected have a
difficult time visualizing this three-dimensional character.
Try explaining to a student the behavior of a shop-welded,
field-bolted double-angle shear connection, where the outstanding
legs are made purposely to flex under load and
approximate a true pinned connection. Textbooks generally
show orthogonal views of such connections, but still many
students have trouble in “seeing” the real connection.
In the summer of 1985, after seeing the inability of many
students to visualize even simple connections, Dr. Ellifritt
began to search for a way to make connections more real for
them. Field trips were one alternative, but the availability
of these is intermittent and with all the problems of liability,
some construction managers are not too anxious to have a
group of students around the jobsite. Thought was given to
building some scale models of connections and bringing
them into the classroom, but these would be heavy to move
around and one would have the additional problem storing
them all when they were not in use.
The eventual solution was to create a steel sculpture that
would be an attractive addition to the public art already on
campus, something that would symbolize engineering in
general, and that could also function as a teaching aid. It
was completed and erected in October 1986, and is used
every semester to show students real connections and real
steel members in full scale.
Since that time, many other universities have requested a
copy of the plans from the University of Florida and have
built similar structures on their campuses.
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Teaching Guide For structural Steel Connection