@@DoggyBingBongwhat does being Indian have to do with the ship losing power spontaneously? In fact the captain immediately called the port authority to shutdown the bridge when he lost power. They did everything right, sometimes machines fail.
@@Skylancer727 Did you watch the ship actually lose power and hit the bridge? The ship literally turned INTO the pillar holding up the bridge. If the last turn didn't happen, they would have gone right under! There was also no tug boats for THIS SPECIFIC REASON!
That’s what a lot of these weird commenters don’t get. It’s a SHIPPING vessel. The boat alone has astronomical weight plus all the containers? Sad situation all around.
Who would have thought that a bridge being hit with an ocean freighter with enough momentum to cut through reinforced concrete like butter would be considered a failure point
@@farhanmaulanailhamsyah6543I’m not an engineer but it sounds like the point of the video wasn’t that the bridge shouldn’t have collapsed. But more that a better designed bridge would have only allowed a part of it to collapse using said progressive collapse and possibly save a portion of the bridge and the people on it
While this is a better design, people in the comments are kinda clueless. Complaining about a bridge not being prepared enough to get hit by a giant rig is about the same as complaining that the World Trade Center not being designed to be hit by a plane. There's things we can do to mitigate damage but there was no reasonable expectation that it would ever take this kind of impact.
Maybe... But think this way, Ukrainian special services tried to blow up Crimea Bridge three times and got small sections of it. One Ukrainian boat captain took this with a single strike
I found (and bought!) an interesting book, _To Engineer Is Human,_ which explains the balance engineers make between various factors. Safety, reliability, intended usage, the costs to build and maintain it, designed lifetime, and more. It gives real world examples. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built in the 1970s, I believe, and had functioned fine until this event, about 50 years. It could have remained in use for many more years, with proper maintenance. Yes, there was a risk of something like this happening, but it was always there. Have cargo ships gotten larger since the bridge was built? Has the amount of shipping traffic under it increased? Should an improved protection barrier around the bridge piers been installed long ago? I would think yes to all those.
I came to the comments because I wanted know what those toys are. I didn't expect the mild controversy. This kind of breakdown in communication is fascinating to me. People are missing a simple but key idea of your thesis. There's no way for the video to address the confusion after-the-fact, so people are left to extrapolate increasingly incongruent arguments. Left to their own devices, the number of responses with imperfect counterpoints creates a recursive loop that eventually makes the entire discourse collapse. As a communication engineer, this is our worst nightmare: Seing our thesis collapsing after one misconstrued assumption.
Now this is a comment I can agree with amongst all these armchair engineers waffling about load capacity in the comments. Your statement is a testament to your education.
Hopefully they integrate different methods of construction into the new one so that if a collapse happens it’s only in one part and not everything. Nobody ever builds something expecting for a situation to happen. A bridge isn’t designed to be hit by a ship, a building isn’t designed to be hit by a plane, and a civilian ship isn’t designed to hit an iceberg. Accidents happen the best we can do is improve the designs so that if or when another similar accident occurs it won’t be as severe.
I'd bet that there are a fair number of bridges like this, where the designers actually did consider impact by a large ship. This just doesn't appear to have been one of those. Considering the situation doesn't mean you design to withstand it entirely. Like this video says, a design change made by considering potential impact with a boat could be building a progressive failure mode, into the bridge.
Newer bridges are a different design. Typically cable stay bridges. This bridge was quite old and the design type was more typical then. It probably should have both, had better passive protection, and been in the process of being replaced.
While true, another major bridge was almost taken out for the same reason. My guess is that there will be massive guards preventing a ship from hitting the supports of major bridges.
What people miss, is that while yes, if the spans were independent the failure is minimized, however by making the segments continuous over the supports, the forces in the truss members are GREATLY reduced. Without that reduction, the bridge would have been 2-3 times as tall to handle the extra load. It should also be noted that this bridge was 3 spans, so you would have lost 2/3 of the bridge anyway.
To a point you are correct. The bridge is a product of its time however. We have newer bridges that would have the same span while having the partial failure modes.
Thank you for going through all the effort building this model and explaining it for the layman's understanding. I will be looking closer at bridges I use a lot closer now and in the future.
I did some civil engineering study in the past and once you notice that every single bridge everywhere in the world is built out of nothing but triangle shapes in the support structures, you’ll never unsee it. The reason they’re built out of triangles is because they don’t pivot and collapse under compression
People need to really appreciate the honesty of when someone says, not if but when it fails because nothing is meant to last forever and never take anything for granted
Of course, the real problem with the design was a lack of concrete and earth barrier islands adjacent the main traffic spans of the bridge. That would have permitted a massive boat to hit the bridge without damage surpassing $10M to the bridge. Sure the boat might run aground, but the boat and cargo should be insured for that.
bridge they are currently building near me in south Texas -- they are doing the exact opposite- they are dredging the canal to make it deeper so massive international oil tankers can go through without risk of scrapping the bottom
@@zombiesoul-eater741that's not what he's talking about. It has nothing to do with the depth of the water. The bridge should have protective barriers in front of the structure. The boats would hit them, when they're not in the middle of the deep channel.
Unfortunately brigs that size can go a awfully long distance being grounded before they stop and that bad boy was full up on cargo that’s a lot of weight to stop with normal barriers
@@garyszewc3339speaking in general: - building such protective islands will impact the currents around the bridge. That might influence the safety of ships sailing beneath the bridge. - It may also affect deposition of sediment in the main channel, making it less wide or deep or requiring constant dredging. - making the bridge wider and/or higher is not always feasible because of various constraints (physically possible to build, affordable within budget allocated for build & maintenance, space on the landslide for the road & bridgehead to go up/down within traffic regulations. I don’t have specific knowledge on this subject, but in general building bridges is a complicated affair with many factors to consider. Engineering a bridge for any scenario is possible, but to do so for all scenarios and within time & budget allocations is where the difficulties are. It is, for 1 example, possible to build a bridge able to withstand level 9 earthquakes, but would you do so for every bridge in Germany where very few earthquakes happen? No of course not. Nor do you engineer a bridge to withstand avalanches when in Manhattan, but you do when designing for the Rocky Mountains. Context, constraints and risk assessment
We have an example of a bridge that has the ‘progressive collapse’ design in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The Tasman Bridge that spans the Derwent River was hit by a ship in 1975, and one of its pylons was taken out. The bridge is still standing today because of this design and with a reinforced section where the pylon used to be.
I once designed a bridge at school it was a competition with all math classes and my design was within budget and regulations and could hold a new born baby we were the best bridge in the school and I was so proud it's still standing to this day in my friends closet
So you prefer shear connections over moment connections. Architect here, i was working on a building where we were demanding shear connections but got moment because the rigidity of the joints contributes to the load transfer and you can use smaller sections/ less metal to achieve the same structure. So im assuming the choice of connections in this bridge came from saving material
structural engineer here: yes. its an efficiency thing. fixed end connections are 6 times as strong as cantilever connection, and about 1.5 times that of simply supported connections
Structural Engineering PhD here. That's exactly right, trusses that are continuous over the supports (moment connections in the span), see a huge reduction in the axial stresses of your tension chord.
We have a similar concept in Data Engineering called “decoupling”. When a data pipeline goes down we want 1 part of it to go down, not the entire thing. This makes it easy to trouble shoot. Stay Focused!
As a structural engineer in college he’s absolutely right as the bridge was made to uniformly distribute the load across in the event of something like this, except the force exerted on the bridge was much greater. It absolutely could have been fully prevented with a different support design however, it would have cost more and would have been seen as unnecessary.
I mean honestly it was an older bridge built on a budget. To have the multiple columns of support everyone’s talking about your going to need Atleast 2 more pillars. That bridge is specifically spaced to allow certain size vessels through. Adding 2 more big ass pillars will certainly have an impact on the size in the harbor. Btw I drive i95N to 395 into the city almost everyday. Hell I live in Baltimore.
ALL bridges are built on a budget. There's talk about building structures to protect the supports but I think just piling dredge spoils there would do the job. Maybe a short wall next to the channel to hold back the sand/soil.
@@greeceuranusputinBridges are typically protected in both ways. Depth control to stop ships by having them run aground and concrete bridge dolphins to literally imbed into the hull and stop ships.
Cantilevered design. Efficient, and not the worst nightmare. Better to spend the money on prevention such as more and more capable dolphins and skirts.
Cargo vessel is usually weight 200 thousand tons ,or heavier, i'm not a structural engineer, but that mass floating at 15 to 20kmph should inflict a lot of force
@@pham3383 Well I am a mechanical engineer so I’m dealing with dynamic loads more often. Depending on how fast that ship was going, it would probably have enough force to tank through the dolphins or skirts. However, its partially the whole reason why we research what kind of ships are moving under that bridge so that we can design them to handle those impacts. At best, we would need to minimize damage if prevention isn’t possible.
@@protoman1214Even if it was it still wouldn’t survive a hit like this. The only way it would be possible to tank a hit from a several hundred thousand ton vessel is if they made the pile dozens of meters thick in diameter at the base of the support column…
@@WimsicleStranger I'm not gonna argue with that. I merely pointed out what I did in response to a comment saying bridges should be engineered with consideration of what types of ships will pass underneath.
Bridge engineer chiming in: the bridge collapsed because the pier was struck by a big ol boat. It failed in exactly the manner it was designed to. This is a great example of why we no longer design fracture critical bridges, and incorporate a lot more redundancy to our designs. In some circumstances a lack of redundancy is inevitable, like all truss bridges, but we add significantly more protection than the engineers of the 70’s. Don’t hit our bridges with boats. Or excavators….
Ultimately its not the bridges fault at all though The ship was the one that broke down, and i can bet there are very few bridges which can survive being hit by a fully loaded modern day cargo ship head on And anyway, the whole thing didnt collapse, only the cantilever section did, theres still loads of road still standing
Most bridges today would most likely be able to resist being destroyed like that. A lot of infrastructure nowadays are designed in a way so that if one part of a building,bridge, ect. gets completely destroyed or damaged the rest will still stay standing. There are entire classes dedicated to design and calculating safety factors. If a bridge is on support away from collapsing then it probably has a very low safety factor
@@zypherus6876 and that's exactly what happened here, even though the cantilever section collapsed all the flyover sections leading up to that section are still standing
@@pluto8404 ahh yes a tin foil hat look at the physics behind it say the ship was about 86*10^3 tonnes (assuming it was empty) and only going at 1 m per second (very slow) the ship would have hit the bridge with 86,000,000 N of force WAY enough to destory a bridge - using P=mv (Mass in KGs and V in m/s) Now the actual weight of the ship was 116*10^3 tonnes and going at 16.2 kmph (or 4.5 m/s) so the ship hit the bridge with 522,000,000 N of force the Kenetic Energy of the ship (assuming it was loaded to 1.16*10^6 tonnes or 1.16*10^9 Kgs) KE = (1/2)*m*v^2 = (1/2)*1.16*10^8*4.5^2 = 1.1745*10^9 or about 1/2 a tonne of TNT edit: fixed calculations and explained them a bit better
What makes you think that being on YT equates to being "lonely"? You're here. I'm here. I'm certainly not lonely. "Old" and "lonely" have two completely different definitions, but you know that already, don't you?? 😉
Yes, this is same concept as boats. where you want sections incase one is compromised the other sections can hold it up. i forget what term i used to describe it but it is basically single support vs multisupport
The bridge's design was sound, and it would have been fine if the ship hadn't taken out an entire pier. This design was used due to the requirement for ships to fit underneath, and while the failure mode isn't ideal, it's pretty hard to avoid this when you have to raise a bridge deck so high without any supports in the middle.
Yes the problem is that the structure isn’t supposed to feel horizontal forces accept for the wind. The only thing that could prevent this to put concrete rods in the water in front of the pillars or a little artificial island, this is how we do it in germany. Its a security factor named „drunken Captain“.
@@hernancortez5865 Yep. Why such things were not implemented is the real question here. It's a very basic idea, but would have saved lives and a whole lot of money.
not a lot of it was left standing. The bridge collapsed across multiple piers despite only one pier being taken out. The guy in the vid is explaining that this is not good and is less safe. Ideally, much less of the bridge would have collapsed in one go.
Right. The boat took out 1 support collapsing the 2 spans connectwd to that support. Also, a red span collapsed connecting to 1 of those 2 spans. So only 3 of the ~15 spans collapsed.
there was a lot of problems with this bridge, the spans were too narrow, they allowed far too large of ships to go under far too narrow of spaces, there was almost no margin of error or any large ship going under that bridge; it was doomed.
As a prevention of the support structure being struck a barrier should have been built to be able to devert even the biggest ship so it could never had the chance to make contact with a support structure
As a mechanical engineer, aka the enemy of structural and civil engineers, I'd want my designs and structures to collapse under an unintended use/load/scenario as opposed to its typical scenario. No civil engineer is gonna design a bridge that's strong enough to survive getting hit by a massive cargo ship, so why would they feel it as a nightmare scenario if that happens and the bridge collapses? If the bridge collapses because a bird landed on it, I'd be much more scared and shocked as an engineer.
Exactly. The guy is making a cool demonstration, but what is ultimately the point of this video? It's damn near click bait for conspiracy theorists. It was built that way because it fit the parameters that were called for. It's like these guys won't be satisfied unless the moved the whole freaking river, or something, 😆.
Nobody designs a bridge to get hit by 200,000,000 pounds at 8 knots. That’d be like designing every single house to be able to withstand a meteor landing on it…
Regarding Baltimore's bridge, it is not economically feasible to design the bridge against progressive collapse because it takes very expensive structural redundancy. Instead it was possible to provide Pier Protection and Warning Systems for Bridges Subject to Ship Collisions (T5140.19. February 11, 1983). The bridge was built 1977 and many similar bridges are waiting for such retrofit before similar disaster will happen again, Secretary of Transportation is incompetent and the US economy is deteriorating too.
Did I miss something? The cargo ship dropped out of the sky? Because as a structural engineer, you'd know direction of force is important, as well as weight and speed.
@owgdj Oh, you precious, sweet summer child. First off......sarcasm. Second, it was a "joke" (kind of not) to how he slammed his hand down to demonstrate how one (or more) sections of the bridge might fall if hit. I was speaking to how the cargo ship hit a support pillar from the side with incredible weight at a relatively moderate speed, as opposed to how his hand came down on the bridge from above (ship falling out of the sky bit) with relatively very high speed and weight
@yaltschuler Cause being nice and/or kind doesn't work. I've done it for 45 years and this wonderful world of ours and the selfishness that infects it have shown me no one really cares, love is overrated at best, a joke at worst, and it's just more fun. Good for you?!
@@PaulOfTarsus777stupid 😂 he was demonstrating the collapse of the segment on its own weight after the removal of the pillars….. you must had a fake degree….😅
Murphy’s law at its finest. Given enough time and rare enough circumstances, all structures will fail. We can only insure that failure is the least damaging and the most easily repairable it can be.
Месяц назад+49
Yes and no, this is the principle that governs the design of buildings. With bridges progressive collapse is considered on a case by case basis. For seismic design the bridge columns may be the pin points so that in the event of collapse the bridge deck remains safely intact giving people a chance to drive off safely. The biggest issue with this bridge was the lack of safety system around the piers and the lack of a pilot boat to guide larger boats. Look at the images of the crash and you can see the boat is much bigger than the bridge itself
This^ I feel like he probably has a longer version of this video where he elaborates on the pros and cons of different designs. People saying the bridge was poorly built to save money don't know what they are talking about. It's important to note he doesn't actually say it is poorly built or designed but that this specific design was susceptible to this specific impact.
@@protoman1214 Agreed it's also important to remember also this bridge was built in the 1970s they didn't have the same technology we do today, and ships have gotten SO MUCH BIGGER than they were. It wasn't cheap... just not the best design. The point of the video is good engineers expect failure, just if you have failure don't make it a total failure.
@@Tindog81476 Yes I have mentioned that in other conversations about this bridge. Many point out that "it should be designed with possible impacts in mind" but they all don't seem aware of the fact that ships were no where near this big when it was built. There is a lot of misinformed people who also keep pushing conspiratorial ideas about this collapse.
@@protoman1214 True true ships have gotten a lot bigger than 1970 by a lot, and there are a lot more of them too... but I must I also say... conspiracy! After all, it was ALIENS that destroyed the bridge... they cut the power, and moved the ship to crash into the column... yeah and it's all because of the current politicians. Because they are all aliens too! I know because I've seen a spaceship once and the politicians all look like aliens! Also the bridge wasn't real it was AI! The ship was actually a ship from 1700s that was teleported to crash into the bridge... that's why it's a British ship, it's revenge for America participating in the civil war! MUAHAHAHAH! ;)
The section in the far right in the video doesn't seen like it should have fallen with this type of design when the middle section fell .I see it in other designs where the middle section falls the outer sections are dependent on the load of the middle. Just seems like the far right section and pillars should not be dependent on the middle section. Guess I would understand if I were an engineer.
Price is always a consideration. It's literally the biggest challenge in Engineering. Making something strong using the least amount of materials. My structural engineer professor used to say any fool can make something strong, but an engineer can design something beautiful, functional, strong and minimal. Designs and safety standards are also relevant to their era. It's all a balance of purpose, environment, available materials, etc etc. The joint stiffeners are literally more materials which equals more money. The design was probably standard for it's time. Implying the government picked an inferior design to save money is ignorant.
Can’t remember the name of a bridge that collapsed in South Korea way back in the day, the construction company embezzled funds and used poor quality materials, so it was a rush job and cheaply build but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see the same thing when the big report comes out.
Trade of for what? That whole segment was 366 meters long. It was even longer than the length of MV Dali. The designer must have dreamed to side drift through the bridge with a cargo ship. 😂
Yeah, people forget about the era of the bridge. It was built how many decades ago? 4 to 6? Engineers didn't imagine 2 million pound container ships losing power, and running into it straight on. No bridge is designed for that to be honest. Later on though the city could have added more prevention measures. Something to block ships from actually hitting the support. Yet we live. We learn. There is a risk in everything.
@@dianapennepacker6854your comment is the most useful one I’ve read so far! It’s the only one that says what really matters, that these bridges are not designed to be rammed by anything and more measures could have been taken to avoid all of this!
@@Adamthebuilder Yeah when I heard the tonnage, and how it hit it. It suprised me that so many people were going after the engineers. No way they thought ships of that size, and speed would be traveling under it. Nor are bridges built to withstand something that massive to begin with. Simply put no one builds a bridge to get hit like that with such a massive ship on the main support structure. I'm sure there are ways to prevent it, but people don't want to pay the extra cost for such work. I bet some engineer within the last few decades saw some ship traveling under it, and tried warning someone, and they said he was crazy.
The problem is that the entire bridge collapsed with only one pier removed. It doesn’t matter the engineers didn’t know a huge ship was gonna crash into it, they still should taken precaution for when a pier is removed.
The amount of energy applied to the system is not proportional to the amount of bridge destroyed. It’s not the amount of energy added to the system that matters but how the structure handles drastic changes to energy and transfer. A hairline crack that developed into a sudden failure of a pier would still cause the entire bridge to collapse.
if a bridge partially collapsed like that, it would still be very damaged in the left over standing sections, just not to the point of collapse. It would be crazy to just rebuild the collapsed section. You would be left with a very unsafe bridge. They would disasemble the left over bridge and start from scatch to ensure a safe new structure. The point of avoiding a full collapse is to try to prevent loss of life in the event of a collapse. Not to save the bridge itself.
Not really. The cleanup woulda been easier and maybe there would be a safe distance for the crew on the bridge to retreat to. But such an enormous stress would put the entire bridge into question regardless of the damage done. Kinda like when cars get into a collision not bad enough to see the damage, but making vehicle not worth fixing.
And I thought my noodle bridge was awesome when it exploded after sitting a 53rd textbook on it compared to the rest of the class that had partial failures after about 10 books... I guess I lost after seeing this...
I would say you did good. Your bridge was designed for one scenario. It succeeded really well for that scenario, and did not need to be designed to accommodate different scenarios.
This reminds me on the section of the deck that collapsed on the Oakland bay bridge versus the nimbus freeway that collapsed, in the ‘89 earthquake. A single section of the deck failed on the bridge. But the entire two tiered section of the freeway came crashing down.
@@hamishadamson4628 you’re right sir. It’s was a combination of the captain and crew for letting the ship move with known problems. The bridge was standing there for how many years? Ship and crew. Period
Good grief. The bridge was solid. The piers should have had ballards or dolphins. The design of the bridge without question was a good design. The design of its ability to withstand a huge-ass ship that didn't exist at the time the bridge was built that is what is in question. That responsibility fell on someone else other than the original structural engineer of this bridge. You sir, are not qualified to be making assumptions that are blatantly incorrect and ignorant. That bridge stood for nearly half a century until the unthinkable happened. No modern bridge would withstand that size of a container ship impact without proper pier protections. From golden gate, to mackinaw, to brooklyn. Just stop. Stop. Please. As a fellow engineer, you are embarrassing us and our field.
I would have thought it would be too shallow where the bridge piers are. It should be designed where the ships run aground before they can hit the pier.
this definitely should have been there but, to be fair, it would take a monster of a slab of concrete or a literal mountain of rocks to stop that monster of a ship. It could have absorbed some of the force and maybe lessened the damage to the bridge. Maybe. I doubt it though.
Exactly! This what I would expect from a bridge- if failed, failed only one affected section! Looks like Baltimore bridge was lacking some structural redundancy😕
As an ironworker that builds skyscrapers and bridges ,, I can really appreciate what your saying ,, I've been erecting bridges and skyscrapers for 30 years.... having hands on experience with huge gusset plate connections ,, I get exactly what your saying ,, ive put gusset plates on that were 4ft by 4ft ,, with about 100 A325 1 inch bolts ,, sandwiched together throughout the bridge , firmly connecting the whole system ,, no break away parts !!
I know the bridge was massive as was the ship but I'd expect bigger dolphins in a bridge thats around the biggest port, especially if you have such a risky design id expect a couple more yards of concrete surrounding them.
I'm curious how big they have to be since the force of the ship was on the scale of a rocket launch. I'm guessing it can be smashed up pretty good as long as it prevents a ship from hitting the main bridge support.
No mention of the term "fracture critical", no acknowledgement of how the bridge was a combination of cantilever and truss-arch, no acknowledgement of missing buffer islands that'd protect the critical support piers
Some politicians probably wanted looks over safety. Years ago our town had water supply tanks replaced, the engineers informed the city council that the tanks came in well below bid and suggested replacing outdated pumps, council opted to keep same pumps but get outrageous lighting on the tanks to enhance the looks.
In Germany there is a railroad bridge. The engineers made it sturdy enough so a train can pass it. But they forgot to add the weight of all the passengers and luggage in their equations. So the trains weren't allowed to pass the bridge with passengers 😂 I'm not surprised the bridge didn't take the worst case scenario this bad.. not while engineers can build something thats not even prepared for the every day use
The problem with bridges and structural design errors is that wrlle...its a lot harder tonfix any errors that are discovered after the bridge has finished construction
This is true, as an engineer, I hate seeing my stuff get unengineered
Rapid unplanned disassembly is not preferred when it comes to engineering marvels...
When your level 3 sentry gets destroyed by that crit sticky…
As an architect I hate drawing up plans then being told they need a new plan.
@@matthewcaimbeul8722so true!
@@minimarbles5727SENTRY DOWN!
to some people in the comments, not all accidents are preventable, therefore minimizing the damages is the only way to go.
THIS ONE WAS IF IT WASNT FOR INDIANS
Edit: at least I know what a toilet is saar
@@DoggyBingBongwhat does being Indian have to do with the ship losing power spontaneously? In fact the captain immediately called the port authority to shutdown the bridge when he lost power. They did everything right, sometimes machines fail.
Yep, thats why insurance exist.
@@Skylancer727 I'd actually go a step further: everything we build fails eventually.
@@Skylancer727 Did you watch the ship actually lose power and hit the bridge? The ship literally turned INTO the pillar holding up the bridge. If the last turn didn't happen, they would have gone right under! There was also no tug boats for THIS SPECIFIC REASON!
In all fairness, it’s a big ass boat
Really! I didn’t understand how big the bridge and the boat were until I saw a tugboat in the water next to them. It blew my mind.
Facts
Ship
That’s what a lot of these weird commenters don’t get. It’s a SHIPPING vessel. The boat alone has astronomical weight plus all the containers? Sad situation all around.
Nobody even thought of ships that big back in 76 let alone built one.
Perfect example of assign your system a failure point or the system will assign one for you
true!
Who would have thought that a bridge being hit with an ocean freighter with enough momentum to cut through reinforced concrete like butter would be considered a failure point
@@farhanmaulanailhamsyah6543anyone who thinks about what goes under said bridge would think that
@@farhanmaulanailhamsyah6543wait, you don't expect your bridge to be hit by an ocean freighter?
@@farhanmaulanailhamsyah6543I’m not an engineer but it sounds like the point of the video wasn’t that the bridge shouldn’t have collapsed. But more that a better designed bridge would have only allowed a part of it to collapse using said progressive collapse and possibly save a portion of the bridge and the people on it
While this is a better design, people in the comments are kinda clueless. Complaining about a bridge not being prepared enough to get hit by a giant rig is about the same as complaining that the World Trade Center not being designed to be hit by a plane. There's things we can do to mitigate damage but there was no reasonable expectation that it would ever take this kind of impact.
Maybe...
But think this way, Ukrainian special services tried to blow up Crimea Bridge three times and got small sections of it.
One Ukrainian boat captain took this with a single strike
@@grudgebearer1404 You don't think either of the 2 Kerch Strait bridge main spans would collapse if the Dali were to hit one of the main piers?
Exactly that boat weighed 116800 tons and the bridge only weighs about 8000 tons so it is 14.5 times as heavy
@@somaday2595 lmao dali hitting kerch would probably send the entire russian high command crazy
The two towers weren't in the airways. That bridge was in a place where boats went through everyday.
I found (and bought!) an interesting book, _To Engineer Is Human,_ which explains the balance engineers make between various factors. Safety, reliability, intended usage, the costs to build and maintain it, designed lifetime, and more. It gives real world examples.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built in the 1970s, I believe, and had functioned fine until this event, about 50 years. It could have remained in use for many more years, with proper maintenance. Yes, there was a risk of something like this happening, but it was always there. Have cargo ships gotten larger since the bridge was built? Has the amount of shipping traffic under it increased? Should an improved protection barrier around the bridge piers been installed long ago? I would think yes to all those.
Excellent
I need to remember to get the book's details and post them here!
I came to the comments because I wanted know what those toys are. I didn't expect the mild controversy. This kind of breakdown in communication is fascinating to me.
People are missing a simple but key idea of your thesis. There's no way for the video to address the confusion after-the-fact, so people are left to extrapolate increasingly incongruent arguments. Left to their own devices, the number of responses with imperfect counterpoints creates a recursive loop that eventually makes the entire discourse collapse.
As a communication engineer, this is our worst nightmare: Seing our thesis collapsing after one misconstrued assumption.
So you're saying that Hitler would build a better bridge? Wow.
But yeah that is a neato bridge model kit!
@@ninjaduck3534Who
said anything bout Hitler
Y' IgnoRANTs is Showin' You gotta be a HATER !!
i see what you did there
Now this is a comment I can agree with amongst all these armchair engineers waffling about load capacity in the comments. Your statement is a testament to your education.
Hopefully they integrate different methods of construction into the new one so that if a collapse happens it’s only in one part and not everything. Nobody ever builds something expecting for a situation to happen. A bridge isn’t designed to be hit by a ship, a building isn’t designed to be hit by a plane, and a civilian ship isn’t designed to hit an iceberg. Accidents happen the best we can do is improve the designs so that if or when another similar accident occurs it won’t be as severe.
I'd bet that there are a fair number of bridges like this, where the designers actually did consider impact by a large ship. This just doesn't appear to have been one of those.
Considering the situation doesn't mean you design to withstand it entirely. Like this video says, a design change made by considering potential impact with a boat could be building a progressive failure mode, into the bridge.
Newer bridges are a different design. Typically cable stay bridges.
This bridge was quite old and the design type was more typical then. It probably should have both, had better passive protection, and been in the process of being replaced.
The bridge also isnt meant to be hit with fully loaded ocean freighters
Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered as a failure mode.
@@badmoose01 way too expensive for something that is relatively unlikely to happen
While true, another major bridge was almost taken out for the same reason. My guess is that there will be massive guards preventing a ship from hitting the supports of major bridges.
@@orlock20 no guard will stop that amount of force, at least not at a reasonable price
@@orlock20That's kinda like saying you should gaurd a spaghetti bridge against bowling balls. Good luck.
What people miss, is that while yes, if the spans were independent the failure is minimized, however by making the segments continuous over the supports, the forces in the truss members are GREATLY reduced. Without that reduction, the bridge would have been 2-3 times as tall to handle the extra load. It should also be noted that this bridge was 3 spans, so you would have lost 2/3 of the bridge anyway.
Finally someone who actually understands structures.
To a point you are correct. The bridge is a product of its time however. We have newer bridges that would have the same span while having the partial failure modes.
Thank you for going through all the effort building this model and explaining it for the layman's understanding. I will be looking closer at bridges I use a lot closer now and in the future.
I did some civil engineering study in the past and once you notice that every single bridge everywhere in the world is built out of nothing but triangle shapes in the support structures, you’ll never unsee it. The reason they’re built out of triangles is because they don’t pivot and collapse under compression
People need to really appreciate the honesty of when someone says, not if but when it fails because nothing is meant to last forever and never take anything for granted
Of course, the real problem with the design was a lack of concrete and earth barrier islands adjacent the main traffic spans of the bridge. That would have permitted a massive boat to hit the bridge without damage surpassing $10M to the bridge. Sure the boat might run aground, but the boat and cargo should be insured for that.
bridge they are currently building near me in south Texas -- they are doing the exact opposite- they are dredging the canal to make it deeper so massive international oil tankers can go through without risk of scrapping the bottom
@@zombiesoul-eater741that's not what he's talking about. It has nothing to do with the depth of the water. The bridge should have protective barriers in front of the structure. The boats would hit them, when they're not in the middle of the deep channel.
Engineers will crawl over 100 virgins just to fuck over a plumber
Unfortunately brigs that size can go a awfully long distance being grounded before they stop and that bad boy was full up on cargo that’s a lot of weight to stop with normal barriers
@@garyszewc3339speaking in general:
- building such protective islands will impact the currents around the bridge. That might influence the safety of ships sailing beneath the bridge.
- It may also affect deposition of sediment in the main channel, making it less wide or deep or requiring constant dredging.
- making the bridge wider and/or higher is not always feasible because of various constraints (physically possible to build, affordable within budget allocated for build & maintenance, space on the landslide for the road & bridgehead to go up/down within traffic regulations.
I don’t have specific knowledge on this subject, but in general building bridges is a complicated affair with many factors to consider. Engineering a bridge for any scenario is possible, but to do so for all scenarios and within time & budget allocations is where the difficulties are.
It is, for 1 example, possible to build a bridge able to withstand level 9 earthquakes, but would you do so for every bridge in Germany where very few earthquakes happen? No of course not. Nor do you engineer a bridge to withstand avalanches when in Manhattan, but you do when designing for the Rocky Mountains. Context, constraints and risk assessment
We have an example of a bridge that has the ‘progressive collapse’ design in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The Tasman Bridge that spans the Derwent River was hit by a ship in 1975, and one of its pylons was taken out. The bridge is still standing today because of this design and with a reinforced section where the pylon used to be.
I once designed a bridge at school it was a competition with all math classes and my design was within budget and regulations and could hold a new born baby we were the best bridge in the school and I was so proud it's still standing to this day in my friends closet
Ah - good place to protect it from ships.
You tested your bridge with a new born baby??
@@davidt01 no we used cans but the weight was equivalent to a new born baby
I appreciate this new unit of measurement
New born baby? Like 4kg?
So you prefer shear connections over moment connections. Architect here, i was working on a building where we were demanding shear connections but got moment because the rigidity of the joints contributes to the load transfer and you can use smaller sections/ less metal to achieve the same structure. So im assuming the choice of connections in this bridge came from saving material
structural engineer here: yes. its an efficiency thing. fixed end connections are 6 times as strong as cantilever connection, and about 1.5 times that of simply supported connections
Toxicologist here,
Cool
Structural Engineering PhD here. That's exactly right, trusses that are continuous over the supports (moment connections in the span), see a huge reduction in the axial stresses of your tension chord.
Internetologist here, I concur 🧐
Civil engineering PhD here, yeah basically that. After all better to prepare than to be in despair! 😁
I find it very interesting. So sometimes you have to make some parts weaker in order to make the whole structure stronger
We have a similar concept in Data Engineering called “decoupling”. When a data pipeline goes down we want 1 part of it to go down, not the entire thing. This makes it easy to trouble shoot. Stay Focused!
As a structural engineer in college he’s absolutely right as the bridge was made to uniformly distribute the load across in the event of something like this, except the force exerted on the bridge was much greater. It absolutely could have been fully prevented with a different support design however, it would have cost more and would have been seen as unnecessary.
Plus the non-rigid connection may not work for the length of unsupported span needed for the channel.
I mean honestly it was an older bridge built on a budget. To have the multiple columns of support everyone’s talking about your going to need Atleast 2 more pillars. That bridge is specifically spaced to allow certain size vessels through. Adding 2 more big ass pillars will certainly have an impact on the size in the harbor. Btw I drive i95N to 395 into the city almost everyday. Hell I live in Baltimore.
It'd be kinda weird if you drove that everyday and lived in Kansas.
ALL bridges are built on a budget. There's talk about building structures to protect the supports but I think just piling dredge spoils there would do the job. Maybe a short wall next to the channel to hold back the sand/soil.
@@greeceuranusputinBridges are typically protected in both ways. Depth control to stop ships by having them run aground and concrete bridge dolphins to literally imbed into the hull and stop ships.
My condolences for your location of residence
The Indian crew present in the ship actually informed authorities before collision to minimise lives lost then why racism was spread against them?
Cantilevered design. Efficient, and not the worst nightmare. Better to spend the money on prevention such as more and more capable dolphins and skirts.
Cargo vessel is usually weight 200 thousand tons ,or heavier, i'm not a structural engineer, but that mass floating at 15 to 20kmph should inflict a lot of force
@@pham3383 Well I am a mechanical engineer so I’m dealing with dynamic loads more often.
Depending on how fast that ship was going, it would probably have enough force to tank through the dolphins or skirts.
However, its partially the whole reason why we research what kind of ships are moving under that bridge so that we can design them to handle those impacts. At best, we would need to minimize damage if prevention isn’t possible.
@@robster7787unfortunately this bridge was designed at a time when ships were no where near this big and heavy.
@@protoman1214Even if it was it still wouldn’t survive a hit like this. The only way it would be possible to tank a hit from a several hundred thousand ton vessel is if they made the pile dozens of meters thick in diameter at the base of the support column…
@@WimsicleStranger I'm not gonna argue with that. I merely pointed out what I did in response to a comment saying bridges should be engineered with consideration of what types of ships will pass underneath.
This is my new favorite channel! Love the explanations and visuals
Bridge engineer chiming in: the bridge collapsed because the pier was struck by a big ol boat. It failed in exactly the manner it was designed to. This is a great example of why we no longer design fracture critical bridges, and incorporate a lot more redundancy to our designs. In some circumstances a lack of redundancy is inevitable, like all truss bridges, but we add significantly more protection than the engineers of the 70’s. Don’t hit our bridges with boats. Or excavators….
Outstanding demonstration and explanation.
Nice demo! Very informative!
Ultimately its not the bridges fault at all though
The ship was the one that broke down, and i can bet there are very few bridges which can survive being hit by a fully loaded modern day cargo ship head on
And anyway, the whole thing didnt collapse, only the cantilever section did, theres still loads of road still standing
Most bridges today would most likely be able to resist being destroyed like that. A lot of infrastructure nowadays are designed in a way so that if one part of a building,bridge, ect. gets completely destroyed or damaged the rest will still stay standing. There are entire classes dedicated to design and calculating safety factors. If a bridge is on support away from collapsing then it probably has a very low safety factor
@@zypherus6876 and that's exactly what happened here, even though the cantilever section collapsed all the flyover sections leading up to that section are still standing
cargo ships cant bend steel beams. It was a controlled demolition.
@@pluto8404 ahh yes a tin foil hat
look at the physics behind it
say the ship was about 86*10^3 tonnes (assuming it was empty) and only going at 1 m per second (very slow)
the ship would have hit the bridge with
86,000,000 N of force WAY enough to destory a bridge - using P=mv (Mass in KGs and V in m/s)
Now the actual weight of the ship was 116*10^3 tonnes and going at 16.2 kmph (or 4.5 m/s)
so the ship hit the bridge with 522,000,000 N of force
the Kenetic Energy of the ship (assuming it was loaded to 1.16*10^6 tonnes or 1.16*10^9 Kgs)
KE = (1/2)*m*v^2 = (1/2)*1.16*10^8*4.5^2
= 1.1745*10^9
or about 1/2 a tonne of TNT
edit: fixed calculations and explained them a bit better
Hello brother :)
Interesting and educational. Thanks for explaining the different designs of bridges.
I appreciate this example, great lesson, thanks
I'm no engineer but, even at 79 yrs old, common sense told me that the bridge SHOULD NOT HAVE COLLAPSED ALL AT ONCE!
That's why you aren't an engineer, and instead lonely on youtube at 79
What makes you think that being on YT equates to being "lonely"? You're here. I'm here. I'm certainly not lonely. "Old" and "lonely" have two completely different definitions, but you know that already, don't you?? 😉
Yes, this is same concept as boats. where you want sections incase one is compromised the other sections can hold it up.
i forget what term i used to describe it but it is basically single support vs multisupport
“Redundancy” that’s the term you’re looking for here.
@@josephnyirongo4889 no...
@@WabuhWabuh watertight bulkheads?
Nice explanation and demo. Thanks for preparing this.
Thank you for explaining this to us laymen. Appreciate the engineers who work hard on these problems and think of contingencies
The bridge's design was sound, and it would have been fine if the ship hadn't taken out an entire pier.
This design was used due to the requirement for ships to fit underneath, and while the failure mode isn't ideal, it's pretty hard to avoid this when you have to raise a bridge deck so high without any supports in the middle.
Yes the problem is that the structure isn’t supposed to feel horizontal forces accept for the wind. The only thing that could prevent this to put concrete rods in the water in front of the pillars or a little artificial island, this is how we do it in germany. Its a security factor named „drunken Captain“.
@@hernancortez5865 Yep. Why such things were not implemented is the real question here. It's a very basic idea, but would have saved lives and a whole lot of money.
Modern designs would partially collapse. It's why you don't see new bridges using this trus design anymore.
How often do architects watch their structures collapse
They’re saying it could cost over $20 to repair! 😨
The excellent teacher here demonstrated his points visually in less than a minute in a way this non-engineer could understand. Good stuff.
But... there are still parts of the Key Bridge that are still up, which was not the cantilevered part.
not a lot of it was left standing.
The bridge collapsed across multiple piers despite only one pier being taken out. The guy in the vid is explaining that this is not good and is less safe. Ideally, much less of the bridge would have collapsed in one go.
The parts that are up are the ramps that rise to the bridge deck and those structures are pretty independent to the truss span.
Right. The boat took out 1 support collapsing the 2 spans connectwd to that support.
Also, a red span collapsed connecting to 1 of those 2 spans.
So only 3 of the ~15 spans collapsed.
there was a lot of problems with this bridge, the spans were too narrow, they allowed far too large of ships to go under far too narrow of spaces, there was almost no margin of error or any large ship going under that bridge; it was doomed.
As a prevention of the support structure being struck a barrier should have been built to be able to devert even the biggest ship so it could never had the chance to make contact with a support structure
Thank you for the clear and concise explanation for what happened to the Francis scott key bridge
Counterpoint: are we actually expecting a giant humanoid hand to slam down on our bridges?
As a mechanical engineer, aka the enemy of structural and civil engineers, I'd want my designs and structures to collapse under an unintended use/load/scenario as opposed to its typical scenario. No civil engineer is gonna design a bridge that's strong enough to survive getting hit by a massive cargo ship, so why would they feel it as a nightmare scenario if that happens and the bridge collapses? If the bridge collapses because a bird landed on it, I'd be much more scared and shocked as an engineer.
why enemy of structural and civil engineers are they??
@@villagemagician1320 it's a joke that we build the weapons and they build the targets. It's a friendly rivalry, at least at my college that I went to
Exactly. The guy is making a cool demonstration, but what is ultimately the point of this video? It's damn near click bait for conspiracy theorists.
It was built that way because it fit the parameters that were called for.
It's like these guys won't be satisfied unless the moved the whole freaking river, or something, 😆.
Thank you for answering the questions that a lot of us had. I stand properly educated.
crazy how a simple difference changes everything, thank you!! I learn something new everyday
Nobody designs a bridge to get hit by 200,000,000 pounds at 8 knots. That’d be like designing every single house to be able to withstand a meteor landing on it…
Show me a bridge with a 1200 foot span that will not collapse when one of the main supports is removed!
I think he just did ngl
@@hellohaveagooddayI think he smashed down on a 1 foot concept model.
@@OmikronTitan you want him to build a bridge of that size just to prove himself right?
@@OmikronTitan The physics apply to larger structures as well. The Baltimore bridge was probably built the other way because of limited budget
Probably several bridges in the world. The baltimore bridge was probably built this way because of a limited budget
Dude, your diorama explains it perfectly 🧠
Regarding Baltimore's bridge, it is not economically feasible to design the bridge against progressive collapse because it takes very expensive structural redundancy. Instead it was possible to provide Pier Protection and Warning Systems for Bridges Subject to Ship Collisions (T5140.19. February 11, 1983). The bridge was built 1977 and many similar bridges are waiting for such retrofit before similar disaster will happen again, Secretary of Transportation is incompetent and the US economy is deteriorating too.
More modern designs will progressively collapse.
You are correct that the bridge was poorly protected though.
Did I miss something? The cargo ship dropped out of the sky? Because as a structural engineer, you'd know direction of force is important, as well as weight and speed.
It lost control and hit the bridge
@owgdj Oh, you precious, sweet summer child. First off......sarcasm. Second, it was a "joke" (kind of not) to how he slammed his hand down to demonstrate how one (or more) sections of the bridge might fall if hit. I was speaking to how the cargo ship hit a support pillar from the side with incredible weight at a relatively moderate speed, as opposed to how his hand came down on the bridge from above (ship falling out of the sky bit) with relatively very high speed and weight
@@PaulOfTarsus777 Why'd you need to be so condescending?
@yaltschuler Cause being nice and/or kind doesn't work. I've done it for 45 years and this wonderful world of ours and the selfishness that infects it have shown me no one really cares, love is overrated at best, a joke at worst, and it's just more fun. Good for you?!
@@PaulOfTarsus777stupid 😂 he was demonstrating the collapse of the segment on its own weight after the removal of the pillars….. you must had a fake degree….😅
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense
I’m not even a structural engineer and I knew this just from playing the bridge builder game 💁🏼♂️
Murphy’s law at its finest. Given enough time and rare enough circumstances, all structures will fail. We can only insure that failure is the least damaging and the most easily repairable it can be.
Yes and no, this is the principle that governs the design of buildings. With bridges progressive collapse is considered on a case by case basis. For seismic design the bridge columns may be the pin points so that in the event of collapse the bridge deck remains safely intact giving people a chance to drive off safely. The biggest issue with this bridge was the lack of safety system around the piers and the lack of a pilot boat to guide larger boats. Look at the images of the crash and you can see the boat is much bigger than the bridge itself
I thought there was a pilot captaining the ship. It was the loss of power, steering that caused the accident.
This^
I feel like he probably has a longer version of this video where he elaborates on the pros and cons of different designs.
People saying the bridge was poorly built to save money don't know what they are talking about. It's important to note he doesn't actually say it is poorly built or designed but that this specific design was susceptible to this specific impact.
@@protoman1214 Agreed it's also important to remember also this bridge was built in the 1970s they didn't have the same technology we do today, and ships have gotten SO MUCH BIGGER than they were. It wasn't cheap... just not the best design. The point of the video is good engineers expect failure, just if you have failure don't make it a total failure.
@@Tindog81476 Yes I have mentioned that in other conversations about this bridge. Many point out that "it should be designed with possible impacts in mind" but they all don't seem aware of the fact that ships were no where near this big when it was built.
There is a lot of misinformed people who also keep pushing conspiratorial ideas about this collapse.
@@protoman1214 True true ships have gotten a lot bigger than 1970 by a lot, and there are a lot more of them too... but I must I also say... conspiracy!
After all, it was ALIENS that destroyed the bridge... they cut the power, and moved the ship to crash into the column... yeah and it's all because of the current politicians. Because they are all aliens too! I know because I've seen a spaceship once and the politicians all look like aliens! Also the bridge wasn't real it was AI! The ship was actually a ship from 1700s that was teleported to crash into the bridge... that's why it's a British ship, it's revenge for America participating in the civil war! MUAHAHAHAH! ;)
The section in the far right in the video doesn't seen like it should have fallen with this type of design when the middle section fell .I see it in other designs where the middle section falls the outer sections are dependent on the load of the middle. Just seems like the far right section and pillars should not be dependent on the middle section. Guess I would understand if I were an engineer.
Thanks! I was wondering about exactly this - .
I appreciate your explanation.
It sounds like the city had 2 choices and went with the one that had less zeros.
It's a federal highway
Yeah they should have built a tunnel instead.
@@ApertureAce The premise of cost still applies. The government still chose the best price.
Price is always a consideration. It's literally the biggest challenge in Engineering. Making something strong using the least amount of materials. My structural engineer professor used to say any fool can make something strong, but an engineer can design something beautiful, functional, strong and minimal.
Designs and safety standards are also relevant to their era. It's all a balance of purpose, environment, available materials, etc etc.
The joint stiffeners are literally more materials which equals more money. The design was probably standard for it's time.
Implying the government picked an inferior design to save money is ignorant.
Can’t remember the name of a bridge that collapsed in South Korea way back in the day, the construction company embezzled funds and used poor quality materials, so it was a rush job and cheaply build but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see the same thing when the big report comes out.
No best design, just tradeoffs
Trade of for what? That whole segment was 366 meters long. It was even longer than the length of MV Dali. The designer must have dreamed to side drift through the bridge with a cargo ship. 😂
I don't recall the ship falling onto the top of the bridge, but let me re-watch the video real quick.
Great demonstration! 👍👍👍
I think the design is efficient
Who would have thought there's gonna be a million tons cargo vessel ram to it?
Yeah, people forget about the era of the bridge. It was built how many decades ago? 4 to 6?
Engineers didn't imagine 2 million pound container ships losing power, and running into it straight on. No bridge is designed for that to be honest.
Later on though the city could have added more prevention measures. Something to block ships from actually hitting the support.
Yet we live. We learn. There is a risk in everything.
@@dianapennepacker6854your comment is the most useful one I’ve read so far! It’s the only one that says what really matters, that these bridges are not designed to be rammed by anything and more measures could have been taken to avoid all of this!
@@Adamthebuilder Yeah when I heard the tonnage, and how it hit it. It suprised me that so many people were going after the engineers. No way they thought ships of that size, and speed would be traveling under it.
Nor are bridges built to withstand something that massive to begin with. Simply put no one builds a bridge to get hit like that with such a massive ship on the main support structure.
I'm sure there are ways to prevent it, but people don't want to pay the extra cost for such work.
I bet some engineer within the last few decades saw some ship traveling under it, and tried warning someone, and they said he was crazy.
The problem is that the entire bridge collapsed with only one pier removed. It doesn’t matter the engineers didn’t know a huge ship was gonna crash into it, they still should taken precaution for when a pier is removed.
The amount of energy applied to the system is not proportional to the amount of bridge destroyed. It’s not the amount of energy added to the system that matters but how the structure handles drastic changes to energy and transfer. A hairline crack that developed into a sudden failure of a pier would still cause the entire bridge to collapse.
And also it's cheaper to fix one segment rather than rebuild an entire bridge
if a bridge partially collapsed like that, it would still be very damaged in the left over standing sections, just not to the point of collapse.
It would be crazy to just rebuild the collapsed section. You would be left with a very unsafe bridge. They would disasemble the left over bridge and start from scatch to ensure a safe new structure.
The point of avoiding a full collapse is to try to prevent loss of life in the event of a collapse. Not to save the bridge itself.
Not really. The cleanup woulda been easier and maybe there would be a safe distance for the crew on the bridge to retreat to. But such an enormous stress would put the entire bridge into question regardless of the damage done. Kinda like when cars get into a collision not bad enough to see the damage, but making vehicle not worth fixing.
Excellent demonstration, thanks❤
Thank you for the visual explanation. I've been wondering about why it wasn't just one or two pieces. What a tragedy. 💔
And I thought my noodle bridge was awesome when it exploded after sitting a 53rd textbook on it compared to the rest of the class that had partial failures after about 10 books... I guess I lost after seeing this...
a rigid design takes more to fail, but once it does, oh boy does it ever fail. tactical weakspots are integral to masterful engineering
I would say you did good. Your bridge was designed for one scenario. It succeeded really well for that scenario, and did not need to be designed to accommodate different scenarios.
don't blame the bridge
This reminds me on the section of the deck that collapsed on the Oakland bay bridge versus the nimbus freeway that collapsed, in the ‘89 earthquake.
A single section of the deck failed on the bridge. But the entire two tiered section of the freeway came crashing down.
Very interesting demonstration
The only reason why the bridge collapsed was a 100000 ton ship. Period!!!!
Gravity
copium
As WTYP would say, "Boat go bonk, bridge fall down."
No disaster has a single cause. Look up the Swiss cheese model.
@@hamishadamson4628 you’re right sir. It’s was a combination of the captain and crew for letting the ship move with known problems. The bridge was standing there for how many years? Ship and crew. Period
Good grief. The bridge was solid. The piers should have had ballards or dolphins. The design of the bridge without question was a good design. The design of its ability to withstand a huge-ass ship that didn't exist at the time the bridge was built that is what is in question. That responsibility fell on someone else other than the original structural engineer of this bridge. You sir, are not qualified to be making assumptions that are blatantly incorrect and ignorant. That bridge stood for nearly half a century until the unthinkable happened. No modern bridge would withstand that size of a container ship impact without proper pier protections. From golden gate, to mackinaw, to brooklyn. Just stop. Stop. Please. As a fellow engineer, you are embarrassing us and our field.
I would have thought it would be too shallow where the bridge piers are. It should be designed where the ships run aground before they can hit the pier.
Great explanation. I was surprised that the farthest span also gave way but this explains it.
This guy is soo underrated
dope video
Amazing explanation! Thanks for sharing
but it litterally did that, there was a clean break at parts of the bridge
Or you put concrete/stones in front of the support underwater so it does not get rammed by a ship.
this definitely should have been there but, to be fair, it would take a monster of a slab of concrete or a literal mountain of rocks to stop that monster of a ship.
It could have absorbed some of the force and maybe lessened the damage to the bridge. Maybe. I doubt it though.
Great video and demonstration
Exactly!
This what I would expect from a bridge- if failed, failed only one affected section!
Looks like Baltimore bridge was lacking some structural redundancy😕
As an ironworker that builds skyscrapers and bridges ,, I can really appreciate what your saying ,, I've been erecting bridges and skyscrapers for 30 years.... having hands on experience with huge gusset plate connections ,, I get exactly what your saying ,, ive put gusset plates on that were 4ft by 4ft ,, with about 100 A325 1 inch bolts ,, sandwiched together throughout the bridge , firmly connecting the whole system ,, no break away parts !!
I thought they'd prefer the structures to not break 💀
i was wondering why it crumbled like lego this was helpful thank you
People in comments saying the bridge should have been built stronger, but was built strong for its day, not the day of super cargo ships lol
Thank you for the information!❤
I know the bridge was massive as was the ship but I'd expect bigger dolphins in a bridge thats around the biggest port, especially if you have such a risky design id expect a couple more yards of concrete surrounding them.
I'm curious how big they have to be since the force of the ship was on the scale of a rocket launch. I'm guessing it can be smashed up pretty good as long as it prevents a ship from hitting the main bridge support.
No mention of the term "fracture critical", no acknowledgement of how the bridge was a combination of cantilever and truss-arch, no acknowledgement of missing buffer islands that'd protect the critical support piers
Damn this was informative! I’ve been informed!
Awesome demonstration,very impressed
Your voice is so soothing.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse is crazy 😢
Some politicians probably wanted looks over safety. Years ago our town had water supply tanks replaced, the engineers informed the city council that the tanks came in well below bid and suggested replacing outdated pumps, council opted to keep same pumps but get outrageous lighting on the tanks to enhance the looks.
I just can't imagine how horrific this collapse would have been with bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. 😳
Excellent explanation, Thanx!
Thank you so much❤gaining knowledge about structures
In Germany there is a railroad bridge. The engineers made it sturdy enough so a train can pass it. But they forgot to add the weight of all the passengers and luggage in their equations. So the trains weren't allowed to pass the bridge with passengers 😂
I'm not surprised the bridge didn't take the worst case scenario this bad.. not while engineers can build something thats not even prepared for the every day use
Cool demonstration !!
The Ship should have NEVER been allowed to sail.
It Failed Many Inspections
The problem with bridges and structural design errors is that wrlle...its a lot harder tonfix any errors that are discovered after the bridge has finished construction
This explanation was easy to understand.
Dude, that’s an awesome explanation!
Bravo Sir
I love this visual explanation