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Professor Emeritus Alan Pense presented a paper entitled “An Historical Review of Fracture Control in Bridges" at MS&T'08 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 5-9, 2008. The paper was included in a session entitled “Fundamentals & Characterization: Failure Analysis for Problem Solving - Historical Case Studies”. An abstract of the paper is provided below:
Learning how to control failures in bridges has probably been an incremental process from the beginning of history, however, starting with the use of iron and steel for major members in the 19th century, the failures of some bridges built with these materials, either in erection or in service, have played a significant role in shaping our current bridge design, fabrication and materials codes. Like it or not, it was the failures of these structures rather than laboratory experimentation that led to the safer bridges we ride over today. This presentation traces the failures or partial failures of six important bridges over the last 100 years and describes how they changed the codes and standards by which we design and construct them. The bridges are the Quebec Bridge (1907), the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge (1940), the Ohio Silver Bridge (1967), The I-79 Neville Island Bridge (1977), the Mianus River Bridge (1983) and, finally, the I-35 Minneapolis Bridge (2007). The failure of this latter bridge demonstrates that the process of incremental improvement in bridge safety through costly and sometimes deadly failures continues today. The presentation will also demonstrate that these failures did not only occur because of insufficient or erroneous engineering but also because of many human factors that are, unfortunately, still with us today. |
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