Posted on 07/04/2023 4:45:13 AM PDT by V_TWIN
North Carolina labor officials are looking into an amusement park roller coaster after a visitor spotted a crack on one of the ride's support pillars last week.
Jeremy Wagner posted to Facebook on Friday that he discovered the crack in the Fury 325 giga roller coaster at the Carowinds amusement park and notified officials. The ride was temporarily shut down.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The engineers did their job.
The people running the park did not.
Be interesting to know if routine inspections were actually being performed......wouldn’t be the 1st time someone rubber stamped paperwork......and if thats the case, gross negligence comes to mind.
BTW, if by some chance that damage is indeed earthquake related, then no, the engineers didn’t do their job.
I’d like to see a list of their political contributions.
A little Flex Tape and it’s good...
The crack was through-and-through. You can see daylight at a point in the video.
No, the engineers who designed that thing did their job. There were sufficient safety factors built in so that a single structural failure like that wouldn’t allow a catastrophic collapse.
+++++++++++++
I agree with your statement as I don’t believe structural engineering is the causal for this failure. This rollercoaster is the parks NEWEST. The root cause of this failure needs to be understood. Was it faulty material? Was it a faulty weld where the vertical and angular trusses are joined? Was there a serious misalignment going back to day one when this coaster was assembled? Consider when the track support was bolted to the vertical structural support trusses. If this joint is not lining up and the bolts were just cranked down to force the structures together you have a BUILT-IN stress in the system that is not supposed to be there. No way a failure of this nature should be occurring based on the structural engineering that is used to design these machines. Need ROOT CAUSE.
Not sure how common earthquakes are in N.C........its possible I guess
Kinda resembles the fracture on the Mississippi River Bridge in Memphis/West Memphis.
Horribly designed. The angled support leg coming up from the lower left and welded to the column...that joint as right at the point of maximum stress when the coaster cars come by.
Geezus...
YIKES !!! (((PING)))
My son and granddaughter were on this thing two or three times, just last Thursday! They said it was awesome (and they survived).
By the way, this is not a crack, it is a fatigue fracture total failure. The pylon holding the track section is completely severed. If you look at the video as the car passes by, you can see daylight thru the fracture. The park needs to reevaluate the entire structure. A fatigue fracture like this one may point to a serious flaw in the overall design of the ride. It may also point to substandard material used in its construction. Chinese made steel? Just speculating.... No, I’m not an engineer but you don’t really have to be to recognize poor design or materials failure.
Thatâs a wee bit bigger than a âcrack.â Thatâs a total failure of that member. Yikes!
The design obviously has a huge margin of safety.
It took a park visitor to spot that? The Carowinds people donât do daily visual inspections?
My question would be are there any more fatigued areas?......that thing needs to be inspected with a fine tooth comb........and the rest of the rides in that park while they’re at it.
Yeah, inspection discipline would be my question.......I’m guessing it’s lax.
I read the article and donât see any mention of them continuing to operate the ride after discovering the crack.
âThe parkâs newest and tallest ride was eventually shut down later on in the day.â
You are right. But I found it in the âwate.comâ article linked in #7.
Maybe some Bondo to fill it in.
JB Weld and a good clamp till it sets. Better than new by the next day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.