Impact Of Professor Farquharson's Breakdown On A Bridge

He was also a designer of iron-clad gunships, a riverboat captain, and a salvage operator. “The design of the bridge did not use the popular form of construction, the truss, or even the newer suspension system. Instead used the ancient Roman arch for support” (Museum Gazette 1). Eads constructed the ironclad steamboat, the shallow-draft boats, and the first sand pump of its time. It removed the sand and silt from the bottom more effectively and easier. The original sand pump was a rope and bucket. Eads salvage company was the most successful company on the river. He also designed a surface boat, the submarine to go to the bottom of the river and retrieve sunken cargo from barges. Eads used a cofferdam to build the Western abutment and had to dig through 6o years of metal scraps. Spring floods and tornadoes affected the work on the bridge for moment at a time. The best way to build the bridge was to use a caisson to make the foundation at the bottom of the river in 80 feet of mud and 12 feet of bedrock. “The caisson was a huge rectangular box made of wood and sheeted in iron panels and stiffened with girder plates” (Bennett 111). The only way to keep water from coming into the caisson was to pump in air to equalize the pressure. The caisson had a stone foundation built around it, and then it was slowly start to sink to the bottom of the river. It had seven airlocks, where the

In the middle of nowhere, in that vast expanse of trees, lies The Bridge. Nobody knows it as any other name. It stretches across the Dead River, just sitting there waiting for someone new to find it. At one time it was driven over constantly, a way of travel for the inhabitants who are crazy enough to live out there. But now it is just there, a giant chunk of metal, rusting away into nothing. Occasionally it is used for things like fishing, or as a

The report debates the Tacoma narrows bridge failure and the different theories of how it came about, using information about what type of bridge it is and the forces acting on it before and during the collapse. It also discusses ways in which the failure could have been avoided, from changes in the design to modifications to the bridge after its construction.

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.

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.

In 1919, a study was begun to see if it would be possible to build a bridge across the Golden Gate. Michael O’Shaughnessy was the San Francisco city engineer. He was in charge of the rebuilding of the city after the devastating 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of the city. O’Shaughnessy knew the need for the city to have bridges. Most said it could not be done and others said it could be done but “it would cost about $100 million to build it” (Barter 23). O’Shaughnessy and Strauss, both wanting the same thing, got together. After the two consulted, they figured the only way to bridge the channel was to use a suspension bridge.

Bridges are structures that become very susceptible as time passes. In Oregon there have been many bridges being identified to be seismic vulnerable. In an article by Ed Jahn, he sates, “nearly sixty percent of state-identified lifeline bridges likely to collapse or be potentially taken out of use after a quake” (Jahn). Bridges are a whole different story because they aren’t easy to be re-evaluated when they are used constantly by people to get around. The problem with many of these structures, though is that more than half of these bridges were built before 1970 (Jahn). Because of this they aren’t reinforced with new building codes making them highly vulnerable to any disaster to the point of collapsing. It isn’t an easy thing to fix the problems with a bridge because many seem stable but are still at great risk. It is known that “Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going to break,” (Rosenker). Even when a bridge is being identified to see if it’s stable a lot of the time they are thought to be ok, but are really in a bad condition. Because they aren’t fully evaluated, and if a disaster were to hit in a certain location it could cause the bridge to

On November 7, 1940, the unthinkable happened to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It collapsed at Puget Sound in Washington (state), only four months after its completion and after more than fifty years of insusceptibility from suspension bridge failure. The bridge was by far the most flexible among its contemporaries. Under moderate winds, the deck of the bridge not only swayed from side to side but it would also be subject to severe twisting. The vibrations were so violent that the deck of the bridge was torn away and crashed into the water below. Thus, this could have been prevented

On the 15th October, 1970, during its third year of construction, the Westgate Bridge collapsed killing 35 men. The section of the bridge that collapsed was a 128 meter span that was being worked on at

The west coast of North America is filled with many different environments and the various natural disasters present there. The effects of these disasters can be seen through the myriad bridge collapses we have had in the last 100 years. California is rife with earthquakes and they have caused many different bridges, such as the Antelope Valley Freeway Interchange or the Cypress Viaduct to collapse. Landslides and floods have also caused many different bridges to fall including the John Day River Bridge, the Tex Wash Bridge, and the Pfeiffer Bridge. Natural disasters are not the only thing that can take down a bridge; in fact, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Skagit River Bridge, and the Peace River Bridge were taken down through human error.

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

The bridge has a very well designed ‘sustainability’ concept, relying on upcycled materials to complete the bridge. These upcycled materials consist of the wood, the fishing net, the oil barrels and the plastic shielding for the barrels. These materials can be used for functional roles in the design, such as platforms, floatation, safety lines across hand rails, and so on. The bridge’s sustainability concept can be further supported by the ease of replacing materials, and not throwing them in the bin. The materials such as wood, plastic and pieces of metallic bolts and nuts can be recycled and reused for other purposed such as furniture, storage or completely recycled back into a molten form for the metallic objects.

This paper explores the construction aspects of arch bridges, specifically the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville, West Virginia. Arch bridges are one of the oldest types of bridges and have been used for thousands of years across the world. These structures can be constructed of stone, brick, reinforced concrete or steel and can span thousands of feet across wide rivers or deep valleys. The construction of arch bridges relies on the concept of compression and begins with the load at the top of the arch, or keystone. The New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia was completed in 1977 and is a true engineering marvel. Its construction and existence allows drivers and cargo to traverse the New River Gorge efficiently and safely, an otherwise impassable obstacle.

The bridge we are modeling our design after is the Waddell “A” Truss Bridge, also known as the Linn Branch Creek Bridge in Parkville, Missouri. The structure was constructed in 1898 and designed by the engineer John Alexander Low Waddell. Historically, the bridge was used as a short-span railroad bridge until 1939 when it became exclusively used for road traffic on Missouri Hwy 4. Furthermore, in 1981 the bridge was relocated to its current location, English Landing Park, where it is used for pedestrian-related transportation purposes. Additionally, there is a second known Waddell “A” type truss bridge in the US. It is located in Shreveport, Louisiana and known as the Cross Bayou Bridge, previously used for railway purposes but now abandoned.