Envelope #12: Composite decks – two checks that you wouldn’t want to miss

Happy Thursday! This is Back of the Envelope – the place to be to get your weekly mini-splash of structural engineering sprinkles 🧁🍩.

Last week, we talked about how to preliminarily check a composite deck for fire rating. Today, we’ll riff off on the decks a little bit more. (For some reason, they don’t teach you these things in school… at least not for me when I was in college.)

If you specify composite decks and beams regularly, this will be more of a refresher than anything. Still, it is an important reminder because if you miss the two checks that I am about to tell you, the result could be detrimental.

Let’s dive in.

(Estimated read time = 1 minute and 47 seconds)