Queensferry Learning
Reinforced Concrete Design
Principles, Eurocode 2 and practical detailing.
How reinforced concrete behaves, why the design rules are the shape they are, how to carry out the calculations, how to detail the reinforcement, and how to judge whether a result is sensible. The course separates what follows from mechanics from what a code has decided, because confusing the two is how engineers come to trust numbers they cannot check.
Who it is for
- Civil and structural engineering students meeting concrete design for the first time
- Graduates starting reinforced-concrete work
- Engineers revising Eurocode 2 or returning to concrete after time away
- Engineers who use design software and want to understand what it is doing
- Engineers checking or reviewing someone else's concrete design
What you need first
- Equilibrium, reactions, shear force and bending moment
- Stress, strain, and bending of a section
- Deflection and the idea of flexural stiffness
- The Queensferry Structural Analysis Fundamentals course, or equivalent
How it works
Behaviour first, then the equation that models it. Every relationship is labelled with what kind of statement it is — derived from mechanics, a chosen material model, an expression calibrated against tests, or a number the National Annex simply chooses. Confusing those four is how engineers come to trust results they cannot check, so the course keeps them separate throughout.
The syllabus runs to 17 modules in five stages. 17 are written so far, giving 41 lessons with 42 worked examples and 209 practice questions. The remaining 0 are listed below so you can see the whole field.
The syllabus
Five stages, from how the material behaves through to a complete design and the checking of it. Each stage states what it assumes, so an experienced learner can enter partway in.
Reinforced-concrete fundamentals
4 of 4 written- 01Open →
How reinforced concrete works
Why two materials that behave nothing alike make the most used structural material on earth — and what happens at the moment the concrete cracks.
- 02Open →
Design basis and limit states
Where the safety factors come from, what a characteristic value actually is, and why choosing the wrong load combination is a more common failure than getting a formula wrong.
- 03Open →
Analysis of reinforced-concrete structures
Idealisation, effective spans, load patterns and moment redistribution — the decisions made before any section is designed, and the ones that quietly govern the answer.
- 04Open →
Flexural behaviour and section analysis
The central calculation of reinforced concrete, built from three principles and nothing else — and an honest account of which parts a code decides.
Resistance, serviceability and detailing
3 of 3 written- 05Open →
Shear, bond, anchorage, laps and torsion
The failures that are sudden. A truss you can derive, an empirical formula you cannot, and the reason a bar must be given length before it can be given a force.
- 06Open →
Serviceability: cracking, deflection and durability
What the structure will actually be like to own. Unfactored loads, a cracked elastic section, and the two effects that decide whether a concrete floor is a success.
- 07Open →
Reinforcement detailing and buildability
Everything the strength calculation never asks: whether the bars fit, whether the concrete can get round them, and whether the effective depth is what you assumed.
Member design
5 of 5 written- 08Open →
Reinforced-concrete beams
The whole design, end to end: sizing, actions, bending, bar selection, shear, curtailment and serviceability — one beam, every check, in the order a designer actually does them.
- 09Open →
Reinforced-concrete slabs
One-way and two-way action, flat slabs and the punching failure that gives no warning, yield lines, and stairs — where the load is not where you think it is.
- 10Open →
Columns and structural walls
Axial load and moment together, the interaction diagram that governs them, and what happens when the column is slender enough to notice its own deflection.
- 11Open →
Foundations and pile caps
Where structural design meets the ground — and where the two most consequential mistakes are both about which limit state you are working in.
- 12Open →
Retaining walls
The structure whose design is dominated by its loads — where the pressure depends on how much the wall moves, and where most failures are drainage failures.
Specialist concrete structures
3 of 3 written- 13Open →
Prestressed concrete
Compress the concrete before the load arrives, so the tension never appears — and design the whole thing on serviceability, which is the reverse of everything so far.
- 14Open →
Water-retaining and containment structures
A tank does not fail by collapsing — it fails by leaking, and the crack that leaks usually formed before it was ever filled.
- 15Open →
Steel–concrete composite construction
Two materials made into one member by the connection between them — and a construction stage that is a completely different structure.
Integrated design
2 of 2 written- 16Open →
An integrated design: one structure, end to end
A single floor of a building carried from the slab to the ground, with every check named — and the one that actually governs identified.
- 17Open →
Checking, review and design assurance
The only module whose subject is judgement rather than calculation: how to find out whether a design is right, and how to say honestly what it still does not know.
Modules marked not written yet are part of the syllabus and are listed so the scope is honest. The calculation library and the design-standard profile system that they need are already built and tested.