As the Weather Changes

Hey everyone, its been another interesting week here at Levy. This week the weather in Michigan went from cold to out right snow on the ground and old man winter finally making his presence. This is starting to drive me a little mad because people seem to forget how to navigate I-94 when the weather changes. So now I can literally add 25-30 plus mins of morning and afternoon commute from Home to Work and vice versus. If you cant tell this is really frustrating me now more than rush hour traffic has since starting.

Now onto Levy Projects, As I stated last week I was in Charleston, SC and yes the trip was awesome. John and I measured the copper building out to give us and better Idea of what we need to design for the fall protection. While observing the copper building in Charleston we notice the steel structure or for better words the "lack" of steel structure that makes up the skeleton of the building, Seeing this got us very concerned for safety. So once I got back into the office I talk with my supervisor (Al) about the concerns that I had with the building, he suggested that I calculate the Stress/Strain and Deflections on the steel columns and connecting beams. This required me to use my previous class knowledge of Statics(CE221) and Deformable Solids(ME222), this was actually a fun realization that the classes I have took have truly come in hand on this project.(So thank you Professor Baladi and Professor Liu). After crunching some numbers I found the beams and columns were adequate for the loads but only had a 11.5 safety factor(SCARY). So after talking it over with Al we decided that more steel was need to allow us to modify the structure so we could continue our design for the fall protection walkway. I'm currently working on the design in CAD and should have proposal ready early next week.

On top of that I've also been working on a redesign for the engineering office area, so we can add a new cubical for the new Project Manager for the Granulator project at the Rouge Severstal Site. This consist of drawing the modifications into the current floor plan CAD file and ordering the new materials necessary for the construction of the new cubical. Also the existing wall well be torn out and we are having contractors come in next week to give us pricing. We should have this project completed in a few weeks. Below is a picture of the area that is to be converted to the new office.

Also here is photos of the GTMS Copper Plant and the piles of picked shred that has been stockpiled.