Posted on 02/26/2019 9:58:37 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
On 14 August last year, the city of Genoa in northwest Italy woke to a strong summer storm. By 11.30am, the rain was so heavy that visibility had fallen dramatically. Videos captured by security cameras show vehicles slowing down as they crossed Morandi Bridge, which grew progressively more enveloped in a grey mist.
A few minutes later, a 200-metre section of the bridge collapsed, including one of its three supporting towers. The tragedy killed 43 people and left 600 homeless.
It also dealt a hammer blow to Italy’s once-proud engineering history – and the country’s confidence in its mastery of a key construction technology: concrete.
A little more than a kilometre long, crossing the Polcevera valley, a river, a railway depot, a densely populated area and several large factories at an average height of 45 metres above the ground, Morandi was one of the longest concrete bridges in the world when it opened in September 1967.
The 1960s were Italy’s boom years. For the first time, many Italians could afford a car. But the country’s roads – many of them narrow, meandering up mountains and twisting through city centres – needed modernising. Morandi Bridge was the centrepiece of a brand-new network of highways connecting Milan and Turin in the north to the tourist hotspots of the Ligurian Riviera, bypassing a congested Genoa and ultimately completing the coastline highway that runs from southern France to Tuscany.
Named after Riccardo Morandi, the engineer who designed it, the new bridge was a multi-span, cable-stayed bridge similar to the Brooklyn Bridge: regular towers, from which a series of exposed steel cables stretched to the bridge’s deck.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I doubt it. I’m pretty sure Mothman only wrecks steel bridges.
There were 643 people living on the bridge?
Not sure about Italy but here in Indiana, a lot of homeless peeps live under bridges.
So I suppose if the bridge collapses, the homeless are more homeless.
I’m guessing that there were apartment buildings and/or houses under the bridge.
Now that you’ve learned that the key to maintaining your “right of way” is never to make eye contact with the other drivers, you’ll be fine, and all set to drive even further south, lol.
IIRC from watching the video months ago, it goes over a lot of apartment buildings, factories and roads.
Years ago they tried repairing a 14-story skyscraper in Seattle. They spent millions attempting repairs, then ended tearing the entire thing down.
Somebody didn’t do their job of dabbing a bit of epoxy at the ends of the coated rebar where they had been cut. They started rusting from the ends. And of course the company inspector, city and probably one more guy also missed that or didn’t do their jobs as inspectors.
The building was 8 years old.
Heard they made that outta some of the remains if the Silver Bridge.
bump
Don’t know ... I have actually seen the thing up close. Somewhere in my photo archives is a picture of me and a colleague with Mothman. It’s made of stainless, not 1930s structural steel.
Just another mountain myth, I guess.
That is a REALLY cool statue.
I’m guessing that in Point Pleasant the parents don’t use the threat of the “Boogie Man” to get their kids to be good.
I was there for two weeks. I overheard several references Mothman in casual conversations at convenience stores, gas stations, groceries ... it (he?) is apparently very much a part of the town’s culture.
Oddly enough, I had watched the Richard Gere movie about a month before going there ... didn’t make the connection until I arrived.
The statement in the article “the new pre-stressed concrete was specifically designed to resist traction” makes no sense at all. The words torsion or tension don’t work much better.
As a former bridge inspector, I immediately noticed that the deck was cleanly broken off where it fell (on both sides). That is where the expansion joints would be. That needs to be investigated, but I have not seen any mention of that in any article.
Anyone who thinks that concrete of ANY kind will protect steel from corrosion is a fool. Expecially now that public works uses salt or brine liquid, we will be seeing more early failures in the future than we have had in the past. Once the steel starts corroding, there is no cheap way to fix the bridge.
I have been told by many bridge design engineers that we designed bridge for a 50 year life in the past, but we are designing them for a 100 year life now. Don’t believe it. The new bridges won’t live more than 50 to 60 years either, primarily because of salt.
So TSR got it, quick search shows the bridge was built through apartment complexes and other buildings. Pillars literally cutting through edges of these buildings....
Concrete by itself has very little tensile strength.
Corrosion of the reinforcing materials (Rebar/cables) in 50 years of sea air(salt) and and industrially pollution environment ...
Insufficient maintenance ...
“The engineer (who designed it) recommended using an epoxy resin to cover the reinforcements with materials “of a very high chemical resistance”. (wasn’t done)
Riccardo Morandi *(the designer) wrote a report in 1979 recommending constant maintenance of the structure to remove all traces of rust and fill in exposed patches on the reinforcements. (wasnt done sufficiently)
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I wonder if the new concrete bridges being built in the US have have a similar ‘low bid’/’slacker’ situation.
lol
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