Structural element in the context of "Civil engineering"

A beam is a structural element that primarily resists loads applied laterally across its axis (an element designed to carry a load pushing parallel to its axis would be a strut or column). A beam's mode of deflection is primarily by bending, as loads produce reaction forces at the beam's support points and internal bending moments, shear, stresses, strains, and deflections. Beams are characterized by their manner of support, profile (shape of cross-section), equilibrium conditions, length, and material.

Beams are traditionally descriptions of building or civil engineering structural elements, where the beams are horizontal and carry vertical loads. However, any structure may contain beams, such as automobile frames, aircraft components, machine frames, and other mechanical or structural systems. Any structural element, in any orientation, that primarily resists loads applied laterally across the element's axis is a beam.

Soft-bodied organisms are organisms that lack rigid physical skeletons or frame, roughly corresponds to the group Vermes as proposed by Carl von Linné. The term typically refers to non-panarthropod invertebrates from the kingdom Animalia, although many non-vascular plants (mosses and algae), fungi (such as jelly fungus), lichens and slime molds can also be seen as soft-bodied organisms by definition.

All animals have a muscular system of some sort but, since myocytes are tensile actuator units that can only contract and pull but never push, some animals evolved rigid body parts upon which the muscles can attach and act as levers/cantilevers to redirect force and produce locomotive propulsion. These rigid parts also serve as structural elements to resist gravity and ambient pressure, as well as sometimes provide protective surfaces shielding internal structures from trauma and exposure to external thermal, chemical and pathogenic insults. Such physical structures are the commonly referred "skeletons", which may be internal (as in vertebrates, echinoderms and sponges) or external (as in arthropods and non-coleoid molluscs). However, many soft-bodied animals do still have a functional skeleton maintained by body fluid hydrostatics known as a hydroskeleton, such as that of earthworms, jellyfish, tapeworms, squids and an enormous variety of invertebrates from almost every phyla of the animal kingdom; and many have hardened teeth that allow them to chew, bite and burrow despite the rest of body being soft.

An endoskeleton (from Ancient Greek ἔνδον (éndon), meaning "inside", and σκελετός (skeletós), meaning "skeleton") is a structural frame (skeleton) — usually composed of mineralized tissue — on the inside of an animal, overlaid by soft tissues. Endoskeletons serve as structural support against gravity and mechanical loads, and provide anchoring attachment sites for skeletal muscles to transmit force and allow movements and locomotion.

Vertebrates and the closely related cephalochordates are the predominant animal clade with endoskeletons (made of mostly bone and sometimes cartilage, as well as notochordal glycoprotein and collagen fibers), although invertebrates such as sponges also have evolved a form of "rebar" endoskeletons made of diffuse meshworks of calcite/silica structural elements called spicules, and echinoderms have a dermal calcite endoskeleton known as ossicles. Some coleoid cephalopods (squids and cuttlefish) have an internalized vestigial aragonite/calcite-chitin shell known as gladius or cuttlebone, which can serve as muscle attachments but the main function is often to maintain buoyancy rather than to give structural support, and their body shape is largely maintained by hydroskeleton.

High-tech architecture, also known as structural expressionism, is a type of late modernist architecture that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, utilizing new advances in technology and building materials. It emphasizes transparency in design and construction, seeking to communicate the underlying structure and function of a building throughout its interior and exterior. High-tech architecture makes extensive use of aluminium, steel, glass, and to a lesser extent concrete (the technology for which had developed earlier), as these materials were becoming more advanced and available in a wider variety of forms at the time the style was developing – generally, advancements in a trend towards lightness of weight.

High-tech architecture focuses on creating adaptable buildings through choice of materials, internal structural elements, and programmatic design. It seeks to avoid links to the past, and as such eschews building materials commonly used in older styles of architecture. Common elements include hanging or overhanging floors, a lack of internal load-bearing walls, and reconfigurable spaces. Some buildings incorporate prominent, bright colors in an attempt to evoke the sense of a drawing or diagram. High-tech utilizes a focus on factory aesthetics and a large central space serviced by many smaller maintenance areas to evoke a feeling of openness, honesty, and transparency.

The term structural system or structural frame in structural engineering refers to the load-resisting sub-system of a building or object. The structural system transfers loads through interconnected elements or members.

Commonly used structures can be classified into five major categories, depending on the type of primary stress that may arise in the members of the structures under major design loads. However any two or more of the basic structural types described in the following may be combined in a single structure, such as a building or a bridge in order to meet the structure's functional requirements.

A load-bearing wall or bearing wall is a wall that is an active structural element of a building, which holds the weight of the elements above it, by conducting its weight to a foundation structure below it.

Load-bearing walls are one of the earliest forms of construction. The development of the flying buttress in Gothic architecture allowed structures to maintain an open interior space, transferring more weight to the buttresses instead of to central bearing walls. In housing, load-bearing walls are most common in the light construction method known as "platform framing". In the birth of the skyscraper era, the concurrent rise of steel as a more suitable framing system first designed by William Le Baron Jenney, and the limitations of load-bearing construction in large buildings, led to a decline in the use of load-bearing walls in large-scale commercial structures.