Stress test may have contributed to collapse of FIU pedestrian bridge

Miami Herald ^ | 15 March 2018 | By Jenny Staletovich, Rene Rodriguez And Joey Flechas

[csvset]

perhaps too early, just looking at possibilities.

[nickedknack]

If stress testing being conducted, why would the road be open, with vehicles stopped directly under the bridge? Doesn’t make sense.

[Reno89519]

Doing a stress test, which might cause overstress, while cars and people underneath? Incompetence.

I read that they were also maybe adjusting cables that were slack, suggesting the bridge was shifting or changing?

I read a bit ago that Little Rubio is out defending the Munilla family that built the deadly bridge. How much money (and bribes) did he get?

Should the state now rush out and ban murderous walk bridges? Maybe ban construction and bridge associations? Hey, is Munilla family company a member of some racist chamber of commerce or other group? Maybe ban them.

[goldstategop]

My guess is it was due to substandard materials that were tested beyond their capacity, lead to load failure and collapse.

A high quality bridge should have been able to withstand the stress test and perform to rated limits and beyond.

I don’t think it was an accident; it was a feature.

[BunnySlippers]

EXACTLY!! A “stress test” indicates to me that they are testing to see if it fails. Why have people under/on the bridge in case it does???

[mewzilla]

Verrastro, an expert in accelerated construction who has spoken at FIU’s bridge engineering program, suspects that using concrete was part of the bridge’s aesthetic, rather than structural, design.

The uni had made it clear that it wanted something pretty. Qs: Is concrete cheaper than steel? And if federal funds were used to pay for this thing, why didn't the feds have a cow about the design?

[duckman]

My first thought Chinese steel. Probably not the case.

[csvset]

This bit of info stood out to me, ( not an engineer ),

The bridge’s superstructure was something Verrastro said he’s not seen in 42 years of designing bridges. Rather than using steel trusses, it employed heavier concrete trusses. The bridge also had a concrete roof, adding even more weight.

“This was a very long span and then they used very heavy material,” he said. “The majority of pedestrian bridges are steel.” Steel bridges are about one-tenth the weight of concrete, he said.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Chinese concrete?

[goldstategop]

Liberal morons chose concrete over steel purely for the aesthetics and self-cleaning gimmick - heavier than it needed to be.

For that decision, six people paid for it with their lives. Hey, the bridge would have looked cool!

[Diogenesis]

Did the order to bring it down come from McCAbe,
Clinton, Obama, Clowns, Hogg, Ohr or Strzok?

[Daniel Ramsey]

Should have been made out of US steel.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

You hit the nail on the head.

[DuncanWaring]

The bridge should have been strong enough to handle a full load of drunken college students, jumping up and down to see what happens.

[VTenigma]

The bridge was to be a “cable stayed” design. Look at the collapse pictures and you can see the bolts where the support cables were to attach coming down from a tower not yet erected. They were pulling “post tension” cables that run through the concrete at the time of the collapse. The cable pulling apparatus can be seen in the photos. These companies (the designers and builders) F-ed up big time and it isn’t the first or even the second collapse they have had during construction of a bridge such as this.

[wardamneagle]

BINGO !

[Haddit]

I was designing special effects for a theme park. An engineer was adding a themed fiberglass panel to a door with 1 inch bolts all over the place. So I asked him why, he told me it was what the engineering calcs software called for.
I told him that a trailer hitch has one 5/8 bolt.

[Hot Tabasco]

I watched a documentary on the building of the Millau Viaduct in France and was awestruck at the engineering, planning and building of that structure.

The deck itself is 890 ft. above the ground and one of the masts is 1,125 ft above the base.

[trebb]

Not being engineers, that’s about the only true fault we can point at for now.....should have stopped traffic in that space until testing was done.

[niteowl77]

The bridge’s superstructure was something Verrastro said he’s not seen in 42 years of designing bridges. Rather than using steel trusses, it employed heavier concrete trusses. The bridge also had a concrete roof, adding even more weight.

I'm not an engineer, but I hadn't seen much like it either. When I first saw photos of the collapsed bridge along with the renderings of that it would look like when completed, I concluded that the architects/engineers had attempted to make a concrete beam with the wrong proportions... this based on what I have read of Victorian cast iron beam designs and modes of failure.

Maybe the schools stopped teaching about empirical dead white guy engineering and the school of hard knocks vis-a-vis brittle materials and tension/compression (Dee Bridge, etc).