Introduction
An important element of an engineer’s job is to have the ability to respond to a need by building or creating a device or structure to carry out a given purpose. It is important for this device to be able to perform its purpose without failure as it will be dealing with people life and therefor the highest amount of safety is needed. Though, everything must eventually fail, in some way e.g. a failure in maintenance or a structure failure. This is why a failure analysis is important to an engineer’s job.
A failure analysis is the process of collecting data and analyzing it to determine the cause of failure and then applying this knowledge to further prevent future occurrence, and/or to improve the performance device, component or structure. In an engineering point of view, this is very important as it allows engineers to understand and learn about past failures in engineering and using this newly gain knowledge, they are able to construct a better design which will lower fail rate and improve the factor of safety within device, components of structure.
In this failure analysis report the topic of choice that will be addressed is the engineering failure of the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the U.S.A state of Washington that collapsed in the November 1940 due to its structural design not being aerodynamic, which caused the phenomenon called aeroelastic flutter to occur. The report will address the type of failure the 1940 Tacoma Narrow Bridge is classified under and strategies to mitigate the problem. The report will also discuss the reason for its failure and the ramification it had on financial and social aspects, and through failure analysis, how engineers and scientist were able to identified the problem an...
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[9] “Bridge Collapse Cases/Tacoma Narrows,”(MatDL], [online] 2011, http://matdl.org/failurecases/Bridge_Collapse_Cases/Tacoma_Narrows (Accessed: 15 April 2014)
[10] “Success: Creating the Narrows Bridge 1937-1940,” (Tacoma Narrows Bridge 1937-1940), [online] 2005, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tnbhistory/connections/connections2.htm (Accessed: 15 April 2014)
[11] “Aftermath – Engineering Challenge and the Rise of a New Bridge,” (Tacoma Narrows Bridge), [online] 2005, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tnbhistory/machine/machine4.htm (Accessed: 15 April 2014)
[12] “Lesson From the Failure of a Great Machine,” (Tacoma Narrows Bridge), [online] 2005, http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tnbhistory/machine/machine3.htm (Accessed: 15 April 2014)
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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.
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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...
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Sitting on the deck of the Seadog, a gaggle of tourists wait anxiously with ready cameras and tapping feet for the boat to start moving again. A tour guide’s explanation for the wait is a mere rambling speech that these tourists care little for, preferring to see the sights rather than hear the history of Chicago. What they are missing is the important fact of how they are where they are and the reason they are waiting at the boat lock. A reason that is crucial to not only Chicago’s history, but the history of many major civil engineering projects of the future.
After the shock of Hurricane Katrina slightly diminished, the Congress ordered a congressional inspection of the federally build levee system. As they dug deeper into the cause of the levee’s failure, they began to discover flaws in the actual engineering of the levees. Three of the levees that had the most prominently negative effect on the city, and ...
Press, A. (2013, December 11). Seattle Deicer Error Made Bridge Roadway Slick. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from My NorthWest: www.mynorthwest.com
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...
Hargreaves, Steve. "The High Cost of America's Bad Roads and Bridges." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
In the early 1900's, settlers of the San Francisco Bay Area considered the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which spans over eight miles long and 500 feet above the water at its highest point, an impossible feat. However, with only a few complications, the bridge was completed by November, 1936. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge consists of two bridge types. The east section is a cantilever bridge, and the west, a suspension bridge.
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Quinn, R. (2008). Building the Bridge As You Walk On It. In J.L. Pierce, & J.W. Newstrom (Eds). The Manager’s Bookshelf (pp 233-236). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson