Teaching reinforced concrete with failure, not formulas
Students can apply the code equations long before they understand what the equations protect against. Showing them failure first changes the order of learning.
- Written by
- Ser Civil
In my first term as a teaching assistant, I noticed that students could compute the shear capacity of a beam without being able to sketch how it would crack. The equations had become a procedure rather than a description of behaviour.
Start with the crack
This year we opened each tutorial with a short video or photograph of a real failure, and asked students to predict the crack pattern before any calculation. Only then did we introduce the code provisions that address it.
Small physical models
Foam beams with drawn grids, reinforced with string, make flexural and shear cracking visible in a lecture hall. They cost almost nothing and students remember them.
Students who could explain the failure in words made fewer errors in the design calculations that followed.
Predict before you calculate.
Sketch the load path on every problem.
Compare your answer to a failure you have seen.
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