If the truck weight increases beyond first cracking, flexural cracks will propagate in all directions and cause yield in steel girders, which may lead to a collapse of the bridge such as collapse of the interstate 35 bridge near Minneapolis in United States. It collapses due to overload by heavy trucks as shown figure 1.2.
The city made notifications not initially planned out and ultimately adding more dead load of the bridge which led to the collapse under too much load the bridge was intended to take. They also added railings to the bridge that did not meet current safety standards in 1998. By replacing them, it added more load to the bridge. During their last renovation of the bridge before the collapse, more concrete was going to be added. They chose to use mixing truck to pour concrete, but Minnesota specifications said that pouring of concrete was to be done on site and mixing trucks could not be used on state bridges. The company's actions to place trucks all over the site to pour their concrete while specifications said that concrete was to be mixed on site without trucks, shows how the actions taken by the company was not morally right in considering state regulations. Bridge construction inspectors determined that the concrete specifications meet required standards and consequently they determined that it was okay to place the materials on the bridge for the
The first example of an external force is the static (dead) load, this refers to the gravitational forces acting on the bridge itself. Every structure has to be able to support the weight of its own materials in order for it not to collapse, this is before any live load is applied to it. Another example is dynamic (live) load which refers to traffic, from people or vehicles, which move across the bridge and apply additional weight to it increasing the magnitude of vertical forces acting on the bridge. But environmental factors such as changes in temperature, precipitation and winds can also create vertical and horizontal loads on the bridge. (Bagga
In the late 19th century, the transportation demands of Quebec and other provinces success in transportation like Montreal’s success in railways led to proposals for bridging the St. Lawrence River. Quebec Bridge has a long story behind it, a bridge that was proposed first back in 1852 but it was not complete until 1919. It collapsed two times in this duration once in 1907 killing 75 workers and second time in 1916 killing 13 workers. In this report I will emphasize on the first collapse.
Sometimes the wind would not be perpendicular, in which the oscillation of the bridge was less, but there was still some oscillation. On November 7th, 1940, the Tacoma Bridge collapsed because the oscillation of the bridge became extreme. The oscillation of the bridge was caused by a wind speed of 42 mph (HistoryLink.org). After, approximately, an hour of a corkscrew like motion, the bridge collapsed into Puget Sound. This marked a huge turning point in the design of suspension bridges from that point in time to current time.
Hernando DeSoto Bridge on Interstate 40. The bridge on Interstate 40 is on the exit route from Memphis, as well as Tennessee completely, as it separates the city and state from the state of Mississippi. There were over 1,000 protesters that day in Memphis that marched against the violence against black men and women and black children. While this march was considered peaceful, they put many officers in danger by shutting down traffic on a busy Interstate 40 bridge. The violence in Memphis stints from great racial strain in the community due to the amount of crime and black on black killings that lead officers into very dangerous situations.
In Washington, the Interstate 5 bridge, which crossed the Skagit River, collapsed last month. The damage of this accident included two cars broke and three persons injured. According to officials, the bridge fell into the river after the large truck hit a beam. The bridge had a risky condition called facture critical. The U.S has a lot of bridges; however, nearly two thousand bridges were built between the middle of 1950s and the 1970s, so those ones are obsolete bridges. In addition, back then, the government cut corners in bridge buildings to cost reduction. Although gas and diesel taxes attempted to allocate to restored the bridge, the government cloud not collect money enough to repair the bridge because people began to use efficient vehicle.
The I-35W Mississippi river bridge also known as Bridge 9340 officially was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge which carried the Interstate 35W across the Mississippi river connected the downtown east and Marcy-Holmes. Its construction began in the year 1964, was finally opened in 1967. It connected the northeast of Metrodome on its south end and the University of Minnesota on the North end. The bridge was the boundary of “Mississippi Mile” downtown riverfront parkland. The north foundation of the bridge was near the hydroelectric plant built in 1988. The south abutment was in an area polluted by the coal gas processing plant. There weren’t any mentions of this in the failure investigations. The bridge was a continuous truss bridge that had a total span of 1,907 ft. It was an 8-lane bridge having a width of 113.3ft. and was 115 ft. high. It was designed by Sverdrup & Parcel to 1961 AASHO (American Association Of State Highway Officials) standard specifications. The construction contract worth more than US $5.2 million at the time, went to Hurcon Inc. and Industrial Construction Company, which built the steel trusses and deck. The piers were not built in the navigation channel instead the center span of the bridge consisted of a single 456- foot steel truss over a 390-foot channel being the longest span of the bridge.
Have any breaks in the pavement repaired quickly. Cracks, deep cuts and potholes can let water drain beneath the pavement and erode the foundation. Once the foundation has become eroded and unstable, the pavement loses its ability to flex under load and extensive cracking can occur.
Two weeks ago, there was an incident at Truss Construction Shop. A hoist operator was placed into an induced coma due to a large part of a Truss breaking apart during a QA Truss load test. The Truss broke apart because the testing was pushed beyond the threshold. This
In the United States, utility systems (water, gas, and electric), highways, and bridges are in critical shape due to poor maintenance, adverse weather conditions, needed technological upgrades, and a lack of financial security.
The Tex Wash Bridge was built in 1967, listed as functionally obsolete in 2014, and failed do to collapsing in July of 2015. After 2014 inspections were made and no flaws were detected so it was left unchanged. In 1967, the construction crew had the task of spanning the Tex Wash to connect the freeway between California and Arizona along the Chuckwalla Mountains. They decided the best, and most cost effective, way of doing this is by channeling a dry riverbed and narrowing it where the bridge was to stand. The columns of the bridge were to stand on their foundations which was sitting on the soil and the banks of the bridges were given large rocks to protect their foundation from being washed away (Kelman).
Seven people were killed when high winds toppled the stage at the Indiana State Fair right before a concert begins. “The Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration (IOSHA) on Wednesday issued a scathing report about last summer’s deadly stage collapse” (Puente, 2012). IOSHA fined three organizations for failure to do their job and keep the public safe.
During the construction, two half-spans being assembled 50 meters above ground level had a misalignment of 4.5 inches or 114mm in camber. It was suggested by John Holland & Constructions to use a kentledge to weigh down the higher section of bridge. It so happened that they had ten, eight tonne concrete blocks on site. These were placed halfway along the higher span to
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is perhaps the most notorious failure in the world of engineering. It collapsed on November 7, 1940 just months after its opening on July 1, 1940. It was designed by Leon Moisseiff and at its time it was the third largest suspension bridge in the world with a center span of over half a mile long. The bridge was very narrow and sleek giving it a look of grace, but this design made it very flexible in the wind. Nicknamed the "Galloping Gertie," because of its undulating behavior, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge drew the attention of motorists seeking a cheap thrill. Drivers felt that they were driving on a roller coaster, as they would disappear from sight in the trough of
On the 21st October 1994 saw, what was described as, one of ‘the worst civil engineering disasters in the United Kingdom in the last twenty-five years’. Balfour Beatty, the contractor in charge of a part of the £440 million project to build a part of the tunnel for the Heathrow Express train in the CTA (Central Terminal Area), were five years later charged with a fine of £1.2 million plus, £100,000 worth of prosecution costs for the collapse of a section of the tunnel near Heathrow Airport and seventy-five meters away from a section of the Piccadilly line tunnel. Geoconsult, an expert designer of Balfour Beatty’s for the NATM (New Austrian Tunnelling Method) were also fined by the Old Bailey Criminal Crown Court £500,000 plus £100,000 for prosecution costs.