Power plants (and other industrial settings) often need to cool water to control plant temperatures. This usually requires cooling towers like the iconic curved towers seen at nuclear power plants. Keep reading
Tag: civil engineering
The Best of FYFD 2024
Welcome to another year and another look back at FYFD’s most popular posts. (You can find previous editions, too, for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and Keep reading
Running Out of Sand?
Headlines over the past few years have suggested that the world is running out of sand — specifically, that we’re running out of the angular sand grains preferred for concrete. Keep reading
The Taum Sauk Dam Failure and Its Legacy
Managing an electrical grid is all about balancing the electricity that plants can supply with the instantaneous demands of consumers. If there’s more power available than people need, it needs Keep reading
Who Killed the Colorado River?
From its source high in the snowy Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River runs through two countries and five states on its way to the Gulf of California. Or at least Keep reading
Engineering Our Landfills
We create a lot of waste and, at least for now, much of that waste goes into landfills. Properly managing garbage requires much more than digging a hole in the Keep reading
Building Underwater Foundations
For bridges, deep-sea platforms, and marine wind turbines, engineers have to build secure foundations able to withstand extremely heavy loads. Just how do they do this? One technique — driven Keep reading
The Art of French Drains
Civil engineers face a constant challenge trying to protect their structures from water — both above and below the ground. Subsurface water can build up enough pressure to lift and Keep reading
Engineering the City of Venice
In 452, Roman refugees established what became the city of Venice across a series of low-lying marshy islands in a lagoon. With no solid ground available, Venice has needed clever Keep reading
Mardi Gras Pass
The mighty Mississippi River has long been bound by humanity’s efforts. To keep the river in place and control its flooding, engineers have built levees, canals, and other structures. But Keep reading