Are You Looking For Engineer Career Disasters?

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Engineer career disaster is usually associated with some high publicity or profile structure undergoing partial or total collapse. Engineers working on such projects are associated with such disasters for the rest of their career. Disasters come in various ways and bridges always seem to attract maximum attention.

Disasters occur usually as a result of chain of errors or even undiscovered engineering principles. The effects of wind loads for example was relatively unknown until a bridge disaster had occurred. Where the principles of failure are known and not applied properly an error is usually followed by an error and in turn leads to another error this in turn results in engineer career disaster.

Tacoma Narrows bridge was completed in 1940. It was the slenderest bridge in the world at the time. To add to slender issue it was also the third longest suspension bridge in the world. The bridge was suspension type and it dramatically collapsed at the end of the year after experiencing major vibration due to mind strength wind. In fact the main girders were only 8 feet (2.4 m) high.

Construction of the bridge lasted two years from 1938 - 1940. The construction workers knew the bridge was included to vibrate with slight wind to the extend they nicknamed the bridge galloping Gertie. Quickly it become apparent some action to reduce the vibration was needed. Before the bridge could be stabilized it dramatically collapsed.

Many lessons were learned from the post mortem of the bridge failure. The main lesson was the discovery of the effect of wind on the bridge which is in harmony with the natural harmony of the bridge. In other words if the wind was of the same frequency and the natural frequency of the bridge the effect is the bridge would vibrate into the dangerous zone. Significant other researched took place especially in the area of torsion.

Now days the bridge disaster is probably the most known bridge disaster of all time with the videos of the failure widely available on the net.

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