a good choice of a structural failure

uprooted shane

for my christmas holidays, i have to write a short 1500 word essay on a structure that suffered partial or full failure due to design, only problem is, i cant think of a good, original one to pick, considering that thre is 200 in my class i want to pick a good title!


any ideas?????

thanks in advance~!

chris85

Not sure what bridge the one im talking about is but there is a bridge in London that opened few years back.

When the queen walked over it, all the people behind her decided to walk at the same step as her so everyone was in sync with each with their feet movement. The effect of this was that the vibration caused the bridge to sway side to side.

The reason was that the designer did not want any lateral struts on the bridge and this is why it swayed.

May be worth a bit of a google to find a bit of info on it.

paraicr

To be honest the millenium bridge mentioned above is the obvious choice, but definitely not original. Also its not a straightforward example to discuss in detail due to the fact that failure was due to incorrect analysis of the dynamic loading.

How about this below



I take it your an engineering student and if so this is a relevant example of poor design resulting in collapse, in this case due to punching shear. Also its a fairly long report and contains plenty of information.

chris85

paraicr wrote: »

To be honest the millenium bridge mentioned above is the obvious choice, but definitely not original. Also its not a straightforward example to discuss in detail due to the fact that failure was due to incorrect analysis of the dynamic loading.

How about this below



I take it your an engineering student and if so this is a relevant example of poor design resulting in collapse, in this case due to punching shear. Also its a fairly long report and contains plenty of information.

Didnt know it was the millenium bridge. Good few people may go for that so better looking elsewhere

Pure Cork

All the examples I can think of off the top of my head didn't really fail because of design. I presume you're studying civil/structural so a bridge (Tacoma, Millenium, etc.) failing as a result of dynamic failure is a fairly obvious choice.

There's loads of lists on wiki e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_failure but many of those structures didn't fail as a result of design.

Just came into my head - I don't know if it's suitable, but there are 3 incidents involving B737's where a servo valve in the rudder failed resulting in 2 catastrophes. These incidents are well-documented and there's plenty to write about.

mawk

well there's the takoma narrows bridge in .. washington? or seattle? anyways, it collapsed a few years ago, because the wind blew the the cables at exactly the first natural natural harmonic of the bridge. the wole thing just shook itself apart by resonance because of like a 22.7mph wind or something like that.

I don't know about you but Tacoma Narrows was the first thing that came to my head when I read the first post

Edit: An interesting failure which is to do with design but which isn't what you'd think of in relation to structural failure would be Piper Alpha. There should be more than enough information around on the net and elsewhere.

godtabh

uprooted shane wrote: »

for my christmas holidays, i have to write a short 1500 word essay on a structure that suffered partial or full failure due to design, only problem is, i cant think of a good, original one to pick, considering that thre is 200 in my class i want to pick a good title!


any ideas?????

thanks in advance~!

How about the pyrite failures? Bet no one in your class will do that

stereoroid

A really interesting potential failure that was prevented was the Citigroup Center in New York. A change made after the original design was signed off without proper examination, and left the building vulnerable to high winds. A lot of welding later... it's OK.

Another is the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse - linked from the Wikipedia page. Just one small change, in construction, made the supports subject to shearing.

A Primal Nut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge

Quite an interesting one - the bridge came down because the wind blew at its resonant frequency.

Borzoi

A Primal Nut wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge

Quite an interesting one - the bridge came down because the wind blew at its resonant frequency.

Possibly go for the Twin Towers and 9/11. Designed to take the impact yes, but not the weakening of the steel from the heat.

Is an airccraft a structure? If so, have a look at the Comet and metal fatigue - they invented it just for the Comet:rolleyes:

breadmonkey

I'd say half the class will do the Tacoma Bridge one so maybe don't pick that.

Pure Cork

Borzoi wrote: »

Possibly go for the Twin Towers and 9/11. Designed to take the impact yes, but not the weakening of the steel from the heat.

Is an airccraft a structure? If so, have a look at the Comet and metal fatigue - they invented it just for the Comet:rolleyes:

Can't believe I didn't think of it. Excellent choice. There's so much to talk about - stress around square windows, stress on the skin. There's a few other issues but there's loads to talk about with just those two. De Havilland messed this aircraft up so much, but everyone learned from it. If I remember correctly, they also stuck hair-dryers on instead of engines because of BOAC.

enda1

uprooted shane wrote: »

for my christmas holidays, i have to write a short 1500 word essay on a structure that suffered partial or full failure due to design, only problem is, i cant think of a good, original one to pick, considering that thre is 200 in my class i want to pick a good title!


any ideas?????

thanks in advance~!

Janet Jackson's bra thing for the superbowl! Though that may have been misuse...

breadmonkey

This is more of a Mech Eng type one

Liberty Ships

kano476

Sampoong shopping mall in seol korea collapsed in the mid 90's, there was a documentary on it recently, loads of design flaws and cut backs led to its colloapse should be easy to find info on.

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/2005/09/explorer_collapse.html