Posted on 08/06/2017 1:34:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The amusement ride that broke apart at the Ohio State Fair late last month, killing a man, was due to its “excessive corrosion,” investigators concluded on Sunday.
The Fireball, an 18-year-old fairground ride created by Dutch manufacturer KMG, broke mid-ride at the Ohio State Fair in Columbus on July 26. In addition to the death of a Marine recruit, seven other people were hurt.
In a response letter from the company, Product Manager Albert Kroon said the investigation into the incident determined that the ride malfunctioned from “excessive corrosion on the interior of the gondola support beam,” which “dangerously reduced the beam’s wall thickness over the years. This finally led to the catastrophic failure of the ride during operation.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“gun decked”
Interesting. I’ve never come across that phrase before.
One could disassemble and X-Ray, but Rides are apparently not treated like Airplanes wrt inspections of critical spars.
Yep, just go to an 0bamsCare hospital for something critical...
Welding is a definite high variability process.
There are inspections and then there are INSPECTIONS.
And processes in between and beyond.
With no intention of a relevant comment to this failure I will say that I have found great difficulty in getting people to understand where risk and what level of it is appropriate. I have been accused of double mindedness for not being consistent in risk or safety factor application for what to some people seem to be identical circumstances when they are not. It all depends and as principal engineer in the absence of design standards someone has to decide and be prepared to take the consequences.
The working life of the Design Engineer is not always smooth sailing...
Now that engineering Skools are working primarily from a SJW “Engineering Education” does not bode well for the future.
I’ve essentially gone virtual Galt and don’t expect to buy major engineered items.
Its a seagoing service term.
“Fudging the entry on the running equipment hourly round sheet to cover willful malingering.”
I get that, but find it hard to believe that the Gun Deck, among all others, would be a nexus of slackers.
Sheesh, just build all support beams out of solid gold.
Gold is the only metallic element that does not corrosively oxidize.
Locate a solid gold space meteor. Rocket up some mining equipment. Then ...
I've never seen test results of the concrete at the Hoover but assuming it to be reasonable, from a design perspective the safety factor is far higher than 10....
Military slang term used by those that have served aboard a ship, meaning the making of a fraudulent statement, often related to equipment condition.
Excessive corrosion, eh? I would have guessed metal fatigue....that failure mechanism scares me the worst because there is no indication from an inspection how many more stress cycles can be accommodated before a failure will occur unless somebody just happens to catch it right at the very unset of a fatigue crack starting. This is why I laugh at the idea that inspections can be suggested as the be all and end all requirements for amusement park rides or anything......I’m not suggesting that inspections shouldn’t be done because there are other things that inspections can turn up. However, once metal has been subjected to X number of stress cycles, it needs to be replaced BEFORE a crack starts.....because once the crack starts, catastrophic failure is imminent and can happen very quickly.
I thought that is the kind of thing inspections are supposed to reveal. I don’t ride carnival rides, have not been on one since I was about 16, my friends and I would go to the fairs and the ride operators would try to flirt with us. After talking to any of them for 5 minutes you would not want to ride the rides. Not the brightest doesn’t begin to cover them.
Sailing ships were rigged with the appearance of gun decks with more cannon than the actual count. Wooden cannon look good as long as no one decides to challenge, but it’s only for appearance sake.
Many states do not regulate them. They should fall under the elevator inspection areas of responsibility.
Every state regulates those.
Depending on the state carnival rides are some of the most inspected and regulated assets. Not sure about Ohio but I lean towards impugning the value of the entire inspection system like the value of the local health and safety inspectors.
Daylight is a nothing problem...
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