Section 5: I-35W Bridge Collapse Case Study
On August 1, 2007 at approximately 6:05 p.m. 1,064-foot section of the 1,907-foot long I-35W highway bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. This catastrophic failure of the main bridge span resulted in the death of 13 people and injuring 145 others. In total, 111 documented vehicles were on the bridge at the time that it collapsed. Included in this total are 25 construction vehicles.
On the day of the collapse, the bridge was undergoing a resurfacing project that closed 4 of the eight lanes. The closed lanes were used as a staging area for sand, gravel, construction materials, and other equipment necessary to complete the work.
Following the collapse of the I-35 Bridge, other bridges in the country, with similar construction designs, were scrutinized. According to federal statistics, more than 70,000 of the 607,363 or roughly 12 percent of the bridges in the United States are classified as “structurally deficient.”
Section 6: Determining the Cause of Collapse
The I-35 Bridge collapse in 2007 was not the result of a single safety precaution being overlooked; it was primarily due to a miscalculation by the original design team, Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates. While the accountability can be placed on Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, the only way to learn from such disasters is to delve deeper into the root cause and determine why this minute, yet extremely important, detail was overlooked for over 40 years.
Prior to making a final determination as to what ultimately caused the I-35 Bridge to fail, a number of alternatives were explored, including terrorist involvement. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arrived at the site shortly after the bridge collapsed into ...
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• Add Specific Training on Gusset Plate Inspections
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.
Having explored this accident, as with many accidents, it too could have been avoided. Going through the checklist of potential solutions outlined above demonstrates how the disaster could have been averted. Unfortunately, this is the case with instances like the I-35 Bridge collapse. Ultimately, the takeaway from such events is how can it be avoided in the future. This oftentimes requires those involved to take precautionary steps prior to an event. Minneapolis addressed many of the necessary steps required following 9/11 and developed an extensive response plan for catastrophic events.
Without a concrete reason for the bridge's failure, every suggested reason was researched until proven incorrect” (Silver). There were many reasons that were suggested, but could not be proven correct due to the collapse. Wikipedia states that “A small crack was formed through fretting wear at the bearing, and grew through internal corrosion, a problem known as stress corrosion cracking.” The failure of the bridge was caused by a defect in one of the eye-bars on the north side causing the other side to collapse as well. “Stress corrosion cracking is the formation of brittle cracks in a normally sound material through the simultaneous action of a tensile stress and a corrosive environment.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is split into three sections. In the first section, Bierce describes in detail the situation, a youn...
Two important, mighty Asian empires in history are the Ottoman Empire and the Ming China. These two empires are in totally different areas of Asia – the Ottomans were in the very west, the Chinese were in the oriental east. Therefore, these two empires, naturally, formed completely different cultures. However, surprisingly, these empires had many parts in common as well. The Ottoman Empire and the Ming Dynasty had both many different and distinct parts, as well as many similarities.
The failure tragically occurred on the night of the dance party, with the added weight of all of the partygoers proving too much for the supporting bolts to handle. At 7:05 P.M. one of the upper walkway’s supporting bolts failed causing the rest of the connections to break and “unzip” (Chronology). The upper walkway crashed onto the lower walkway causing both to fall onto the lobby floor below. Numerous key factors are often cited as having left the construction project vulnerable to such fatal design flaws.
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.
Senior Project Senior Project Outline Introduction: Let the reader know what this Essay is about. I. What I already know A.
Hargreaves, Steve. "The High Cost of America's Bad Roads and Bridges." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
According to Suspension bridges: Concepts and various innovative techniques of structural evaluation, “During the past 200 years, suspension bridges have been at the forefront in all aspects of structural engineering” (“Suspension”). This statement shows that suspension bridges have been used for over 200 years, and that people are still using them today because they are structurally better bridges. This paper shows four arguments on the advantages of suspension bridges, and why you should use one when building a bridge. When deciding on building a suspension bridge, it has many advantages such as; its lightness, ability to span over a long distance, easy construction, cost effective, easy to maintain, less risk
September 11th, 2001 is one of the worst days in the United States of America’s history by far. It all began at 8:45am when a stolen airplane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Many people believed that this was...
As a species, humanity, henceforth, people, will never go out of business, but as individuals and specified groups, people can and will fail, because people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. In the modern society, it has become mandatory that all high school seniors are required to complete and present a “Senior Project,” to show the world that they can be taken seriously. Covering these points will include: what the project is, examples of different advocators of the project, and the different viewpoints of why it is useful verses why it is not.
...ernment instituted the Federal Aid Highway Act 1976. This allotted $175 million to the processes of "for resurfacing, restoring, and rehabilitating those lanes on the Interstate System which have been in use for more than five years and which are not on toll roads." (-http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/intmaint.cfm) Initially set at a 90-10 rate of Federal to state funding, the projects were gradually moved to a more manageable 75-25 rate of funding. Known as 3R needs of the Interstate, resurfacing, restoring and rehabilitating. A fourth ‘R’ was added in 1981 with the introduction of reconstruction. Reconstruction was vitally important to improving those roads which had long ago fallen into disrepair. Bridges, tunnels, and the vast system itself were influenced heavily by the 1981 Act by allowing Federal funding to also remove and replace items where necessary.
Hazards pose risk to everyone. Our acceptance of the risks associated with hazards dictates where and how we live. As humans, we accept a certain amount of risk when choosing to live our daily lives. From time to time, a hazard becomes an emergent situation. Tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast or earthquakes in California are all hazards that residents in those regions accept and live with. This paper will examine one hazard that caused a disaster requiring a response from emergency management personnel. Specifically, the hazard more closely examined here is an earthquake. With the recent twenty year anniversary covered by many media outlets, the January 17, 1994, Northridge, California earthquake to date is the most expensive earthquake in American history.
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.)
Riyad Aboutaha, Fares Jnaid, Sara Sotoud, and Mucip Tapan “Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Deteriorated Concrete Bridge Components” Technical Report
The final designs of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, once finalized, were a sharp and drastic contrast from the design by Leon Moisseiff. Instead of a thin plate girder, an open-air stiffening truss with a depth of 33 feet (10 m) would form the new road deck. Newer, larger towers that rose 58 feet (18 m) higher and 21 feet (6.4 m) wider than Gertie's towers, would support the bridge's main cables, now 20 1⁄4 inches (510 mm) in diameter versus Gertie's 17 1⁄2 inches (440 mm). Newer, larger anchor blocks would support a load that weighed 1.6 times as much as the original bridge. However, some elements of Galloping Gertie were incorporated into the 1950 span. The tower pedestals were enlarged and raised 17 feet (5.2 m). On the west end stood a 450-foot (140 m) long approach viaduct with the same 8-foot (2.4 m) deep girders Gertie's main deck had. This approach viaduct used three support towers, two with thin support beams and one with the structural complexity and design of one of Gertie's main towers - each spaced 150 feet (46 m) apart. The viaduct, after a structural examination, was kept and utilized as part of the 1950 bridge's design, with an additional box strut brace added to the tower closest the shoreline (officially known as Tower #3 in the design plans), and widening of the upper box strut for the new bridge's