REFORMING STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY OF BRIDGES:
ANALYSIS ON THE COLLAPSE OF I-35W
With over six and a half million kilometers of roads and over two hundred fifty million registered vehicles, the United States must work to maintain the structural integrities of its roads and prevent unnecessary loss of lives. On August 1 of 2007, at precisely 6:05 PM, the I-35 West Bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, killing thirteen people and injuring another one hundred and forty five. The incident left the entire nation in both shock and doubt of the safety of its roads. Their doubts are not unwarranted. Structural engineer experts reveal that over eight thousand bridges in the United States alone are in need of remodeling. In order to assess fully
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The Washington State Department of Transportation states that gusset plates are used to connect two or more structural members at a joint in a steel truss and need to be strong enough to accommodate the loads and stresses that a bridge will experience throughout its lifetime. The undersized gusset plates of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis evidently did not serve its purpose. Experts and analysts suggest that if the gusset plates needed to be at least twice its original half inch size in order to have sustained the bridge …show more content…
What can future engineers and bridge builders change to prevent such unnecessary costs? ThinkReliability, a consultant group that study root cause analysis focusing on problems and processes, gives a few suggestions. The first reform that must be made is the limiting of weight concentration of construction materials. Moreover, staging materials on bridges must require written permission so that the concentration of weight could have been calculated and prevented. The next solution is to ensure that bridge inspectors receive formal bridge construction training ensuring that they can accurately assess the conditions of the bridge. Thirdly, a weight analysis should be required after every major renovation or increase of dead weight. This will provide a more realistic understanding of the bridge’s load capacity and safety margin. The fourth and final change regards the careful application of gusset plates on bridges. Gusset plates’ weight capacity must be analyzed in order to provide a sufficient support for future bridges. In addition, construction workers and bridge designers must be educated on the importance of gusset plates in
Steven Hermosillo Professor Wallace Fire Tech 105 15 November 2015 Silver Bridge Collapse According to Wikipedia, Forty-six people were killed in the silver-bridge collapse and another nine people were injured. “The Silver Bridge was an eye-bar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, over the Ohio River” (Wikipedia). This was a highly used bridge serving thousands of cars a day before the collapse.
Construction of The Peace Bridge in Buffalo New York What can construction do for an area? The construction of an office building may bring in a firm, corporation, or company. The construction of a sporting arena may keep a team where it currently is, or bring a new team to that area. For example, the construction of the HSBC Arena kept the Sabres in Buffalo. The construction of a casino may bring in tourists, or people who live in the outlying suburbs.
The Bailey Island Bridge is located in Harpswell, Maine on Route 24. Before the making of the bridge, the fishermen that lived on Bailey’s Island wanted a bridge that connected their island to Orr’s Island. The town of Harpsweell made and voted on their decisions in the weekly town meetings (“Bailey”). The project was stalled because of some of the mainlanders in the town, but it was brought back up for discussion in 1912. They first agreed on a “road” which would connect the two islands and would be constructed with timber. This was to cost $3,000. The cost quickly reached $25,000 at a later town meting because they decided to build the bridge with stone and concrete instead. Once the legislature decided to pass a bill stating that it would fun state’s highway and bridge projects, they decided to move forward with the project (Hansen, 36).
The enormous responsibility that an engineer has when designing a project is often overlooked. His or her job is not only to create a design that will work under ideal conditions, but that will meet the regulations of environmental and building codes and will also survive the unpredictable forces of nature that structures are sometimes subjected to. An article in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, "Structures are Held up by Both Skill and Luck,"1 describes many risks involved in the designing process and the failures that can occur when small details are overlooked. In light of a recent surge of failures in the Northwest, the article says:
At the time of its construction in 1929, the Ambassador Bridge was the largest spanned suspension bridge at 564 meters until the George Washington Bridge was built. It was an engineering masterpiece at the time. The total bridge length is 2,286 meters and rises to 118 meters above the river. Suspension cables support the main span of the Ambassador Bridge and the main pillars under the bridge are supported by steel in a cantilever truss structure. In total, the McClintic-Marshall masterpiece is comprised of 21,000 tons of steel. The immense socio-economical impact that the Ambassador Bridge has on transportation and trade is imperative for daily interaction between the Un...
The Golden Gate bridge, standing as an icon of roadway innovations, took multiple engineers years to design and complete. They could not just simply build an ordinary bridge. They had to take into consideration the physics behind it, as well as, what kind of effect the environment would have upon the bridge. The bridge sits along one of the most active fault lines in the world, so engineers had to make sure their bridge could withstand a little movement. Today the Golden Gate bridge still stands tried and true, as does many other innovations that 20th century engineers came up with.
The process of designing, building and inspecting the bridge had plenty of assumptions. Training on the strength of gusset plates would have mitigated those assumptions with expertise.
Staten Island is a part of New York as well. Since it was dispatched from the main New York City, in the 1950s there were only 3% of the entire New York City population living there. Even though it occupies 16% of New York City’s land mass, there was little people in Staten Island relative to the mainland city. Furthermore, there was no link to the mainland resulting in a lack of urban development in the island as transportation facilities are weak and not efficient. Therefore it served as a residential suburb. In 1964 a direct surface link was introduced in the form of the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge. Approximated travel time from Staten Island to the Mayor’s Office became 30 minutes. Since travel time
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The first and most challenging problem associated with building the Mackinac Bridge arrived long before the bridge was even designed. Financing such an enormous project was no easy feat. In 1928, the idea of connecting the upper and lower peninsulas was proposed to Congress for the first time (Brown 4). At the time, the suspected bridge project was very much under government scrutiny and control. In fact, the initial boost in interest in pursuing the construction of a bridge came about due to the depression. The Public Works Administration (PWA) had been created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic plan which would fund certain construction projects with th...
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 wave. On the last day of the bridge's existence it gave fair warning that its destruction was eminent. Not only did it oscillate up and down, but twisted side to side in a cork screw motion. After hours of this violent motion with wind speeds reaching forty and fifty miles per hour, the bridge collapsed. With such a catastrophic failure, many people ask why such an apparently well thought out plan could have failed so badly?(This rhetorical question clearly sets up a position of inquiry-which iniates all research.) The reason for the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is still controversial, but three theories reveal the basis of an engineering explanation. (Jason then directly asserts what he found to be a possible answer to his question.)
In her essay,”Importance of the Golden Gate Bridge,” Stephanie Stiavetti suggest that “It maintained this point of pride for nearly 25 years until the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge was built in New York in 1964. Today, this historic San Francisco landmark holds its place as the second largest suspension bridge in the country, behind Verrazano Narrows.” Back then, experts thought that it would be impossible to build a bridge across the tides and currents in that area because strong currents and tides would make construction extremely difficult and dangerous. The water is over 500 feet deep in the center of the channel, and along with the area's strong winds and thick fog, the idea of building a bridge there seemed nearly impossible. Despite all of the problems of building a bridge across the Golden Gate, Joseph Strauss was named as lead engineer for the project. Construction began January 5, 1933, and in the end cost more than $35 million to
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In conclusion, civil engineers have a responsibility to deal with current issues in a professional and ethical manner for the benefit of society. The topics discusses included: high energy consumption of buildings, the need for efficient water resources, transportation planning, poor infrastructures doomed to failure, the need to have higher standards to become a licensed professional engineer, how globalization has affected all engineers, and the need to have more professional use advance engineering informatics. All these subjects were pondered about how these challenges can be overcome are there effective methods that engineers can apply today. Unfortunately, not all problems are easy to handle.