Silver Bridge Disaster


Up until 2019, I don’t remember ever hearing or reading about this bridge failure. Though the failure was 50+ years ago, the topics are all still current — and pertinent to our work.
Date of Failure:Β  December 15, 1967
Crossing:Β  Ohio River
Locale: Point Pleasant, WVΒ 
and
Gallipolis, OHΒ 

Design Lessons (to be) Learned:

  • Hubris
  • Redundancy
  • Load factor
  • Minimal design
  • Overconfidence in new material use
  • Eyebar design
  • Residual stress
  • Fracture toughness
  • Temperature related brittle fracture
  • Fretting
  • Stress corrosion cracking
  • Maintenance
  • Design loads
  • Increase in traffic

Inspection and Maintenance Lessons (to be) Learned:

The Silver Bridge Disaster an excellent, thorough presentation on YouTube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge

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