| Engineers-Minn. bridge collapse-knarled steel–suspicious looking?

Engineers-Minn. bridge collapse-knarled steel–suspicious looking?

Gabrielle asked:


Any Engineers/Professionals out there have an opinion of the situation?

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5 Responses to “Engineers-Minn. bridge collapse-knarled steel–suspicious looking?”

  1. xjmox14x on June 2nd, 2009 9:26 pm

    Well, the fact that they were doing repair work right before it happened certainly sets off a red flag. It may be one of those things that “they’ve known about”, but tried to just slap a patch on it. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the investigations in the coming weeks.

  2. John S on June 6th, 2009 4:57 am

    Get real, Jack! Don’t start another conspiracy/terrorist fear campaign. The only beneficiaries of that sort of hype are the press. Wait until the whole situation has been thoroughly investigated and the report released.
    Then you can have a go at them.

  3. chlaxman17 on June 8th, 2009 9:20 pm

    I’m sure engineers here have by now thoroughly inspected the remains of the bridge and determined the reason for the collapse. Please, everyone can now jump to conclusions.

  4. C_Rock136 on June 12th, 2009 5:18 am

    I would say fatigue failure due to stress cracks. The bridge was probably not intended withstand the traffic volume in 1967 that it is receiving today in 2007. Vibration due to the train passing nearby could have contributed to resonance vibration as well. Since it is a non-redundant bridge design, when one structural member fails - the whole entire bridge fails. Bridges today are designed to withstand total structural failure due to one structural member failure. This bridge however was not designed that way. I wouldn’t say it is suspicious. I would say it is a lack of thorough inspection on the engineers’ part. Bridges that are this old need to be carefully and constantly checked for stress fractures and fatigue signs. The steel looks to have been corroded in many spots which will considerably low the yield stress and lead to plastic deformation, plastic deformation is the point of stress where the material cannot return to its original shape - it is permanently damaged.

  5. muddypuppyuk on June 13th, 2009 12:45 pm

    Bridges are meant to be fairly static structures, vibrating under load and swaying a little in the breeze, etc.

    When a mechanical component fails, the static system turns in to a dynamic load and it is either stopped or it continues on until rest, this would be due to gravity and normally occurs at ground level. This is called catastrophic failure.

    It will leave suspicious looking bent metal, suspicious looking crushed concrete and cars, and even suspicious looking school buses. If you are paranoid.

    Just looks like a catastrophic failure to me.

    ps- did you notice how fast the media was there? it was almost like they knew beforehand………….
    :-)