How is the work for a structural engineer?

Engineering of any discipline is interesting and challenging. The more background you have when entering the university the more you can expect to learn and how your courses apply to real world situations. If you are intellectually inclined a masters and doctors degree could lead to research and development activities of ever greater challenges.

Don't forget that intellectually challenging also means socially challenging. You have to interact with other people. If you can't do that, if you have any good ideas they will be ignored.

Yes, it is very interesting to be a structural engineer, where you will use all math and mechanics you have learned and shall be learn more and more related to forces and stress analysis for a lot of loading problems and its designs.

It sounds like you want lots of math (I was surprised in my final year of school how many students didn't like the math or the computer programming!) and a challenge. There's huge demand for structural engineers in aerospace right now. A bachelors and a good handle of stress principles is the biggest qualifier. In fact there's a civi that sits right next to me and is the go-to-guy for FEA analysis.

Sorry, no concrete or rebar around here though.

Good luck!

It was very interesting to read your replies. However I have some more questions. I am absolutely sure I will love the Structural engineering programme I am however not suere I'd like to work as a structural engineer.

I have read a lot of the coursedescriptions and it sounds extremely interesting. But from what I've read on other forums it isn't that hard beeing a structural engineer(no offense, this is just something I've read), because the computer can do all the calculations for you.

I mean, how is it to do the final element analysis on the computer? How do you work on this?, what kind of skills does it require to do it?

The computer can do the 'grunt' or tedious part. You must know the computations to be made and the parameters to be used. "MatLab" does much of everything except make the decisions as to what is to be calculated and how.

Amen StirlingStan...the computer is only as smart as the person running it. Black-box solutions are marketed a lot but if they were perfect, why all the updates, service packs and everything? Computers only got rid of the slide rulers.

I like airplanes and was aiming at the industry with my education before I decided specifically on stress analysis...on that note I'm not really qualified to speak on behalf of a civil engineering point of view (i.e. buildings, bridges, etc). I call myself a stress engineer (not a structural engineer) because the principles apply to any industry...just the materials and tools change if you really think about it. My experience is all in aircraft structures so it's all thin, delicate structure. The different aspects of the work I've done since I started has varied from preliminary definition of structure (fun, fast paced, challenging) to reports (booooring but someone has to do it and the pay is still the same).

While there is a lack of engineers, the nature of our chosen industry is that most everything is project based so for a while there's more work than ever imagines and at other times it slows down (which is a nice break to use up some of those banked over-time hours).

The best thing I can say is pick the industry that interests you the most and just dive in. You'll begin to see what interests you more and where your skill-set and mentality fits you in.

kkjensen Your post brought up another point to mind. The larger projects are frequently assigned to task oriented groups of mutilple disciplines. You must learn to work well with others too. Supporting your points of view with well reasoned facts and figures.

A congenial but not a door mat personality helps.

Is the personal skills more important in structural engineering than other engineering-jobs?

Engineering is engineering whatever the field where it shall be used. The most important is the type and volume of efforts consumed to solve the engineering problems.

Or, may be you like to be Rock star:

From engineer to rock star

Jonathan Coulton quit his day job as a software engineer to become a successful rocker.

You can Rock-Swing- anything and yet do a great job of Structural Engineering:

Everything comes to play- metal strength,Welding,Stress analysis, disaster foresight-

How to minimize Costs/times-Maximize benefits-- yet makes the end-result look ---Effortless!

But it will need a lot of luck for you get a platform to try your acquired skills.

Like <http://www.cowi.dk/cowi/da/publikationpopup/?guid=%7B4558DC59-4D04-479E-A0DD-A5D68D29EAF4%7D

<http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/sutong/sutong6.html

Now that is the great gamble--LIFE--

To be or not to be!

Is it interesting to be a structural engineer? Do you get to use a lot of the math and mechanics you have learned. Basically, is it intellectually challenging?

Well, what is interesting to one is a yawn to another. I have been a structural engineer for 53 years. After gaining a little experience with established firms, I started my own business in 1969 and have been enjoying every minute of it ever since...well, maybe not every minute, but most minutes.

Like any job, there are fun aspects to it but there is also some drudgery. For me, the drudgery has been in keeping track of time sheets, invoicing, collecting from slow paying clients and reporting to the taxation office. To me that is drudgery. To an accountant, it is the essence of life. In any case, it has to be done. But, it all depends on how you define interesting. These are necessary aspects of every type of business.

Structural engineering can be extremely challenging at times, but I wonder if you really desire constant challenge. Let's say your firm is designing an arena. The architect has a new concept which has never been tried before. You are the structural design engineer on the project. You think you have a solution, but are not totally sure whether or not it will work. You seek help from your colleagues but they are unsure. You check out the internet, the city library and the university library, but come to a dead end. What are you going to do? The architect and client are badgering you to get the job done, but you are not quite sure. You often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the problem. Should you proceed with your gut feeling, perhaps endangering the lives of thousands of people if your theory is wrong? Should you back off and tell them to modify their design concept? Should you tell the boss that you don't want to continue?

Sometimes it's nice to have a job involving a little less challenge, one which you can handle with straightforward engineering principals, one which allows you to sleep at night. But, in any case, all the best of luck to you in your future career.

If you want to do advanced math yourself, or develop the programs to solve advanced math for mechanical systems. Physics is probably more along your line, it is true much the daily math and probelm solving involved in structural engineering is accomplished by generic computer programs, where you really only need to know how to input data and have to consider some common assumptions about how the mechanical system, pinned, fixed, cantilevered, etc.. Physicists tend to work on the cutting edge of mechanics, so they frequently have to develop the math to even be able to express a solution to a problem, then figure out how to devvelop a computer program that simulates the mathematics properly, then input all known and assumed parameters, and verify the solution since the program is non-standard. It is not the math and mechanics that are new with each project in structural engineering, these are always the same few principles, but rather the physical structure itself that is being proposed (end product appears different, though all are assumed to behave in similar manners based on a few properties). Plus in the end, people will perceive the complexity and value of your work product immediately. Physics, even amongst highly educated engineers scientists, may take 3 lifetimes before any real recognition of value and applicability occurs. the men who developed the principles and theories of quantum mechanics were all dead before there were any real applications, and even 100 years later 99.9% + of the population barely even know these concepts exist (probably 80% of the population barely uderstands Newtonian physics 400 years after newton developed them).

Simplest answer: You'll get out of it what you put into it.

Go for it. I do geotechnical, but all my structural nerd buddies like it. Good on 'em!

Excellent, these words simplify the subject: "You'll get out of it what you put into it".