How to stop a colossal bridge corroding
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- Опубликовано: 21 июл 2019
- A decade ago, engineers found the Humber Bridge had the same problem as many of the world's suspension bridges: unexpectedly fast corrosion. Here's how they fixed it, and how they're checking that it's staying fixed.
Thanks to all the team at the Humber Bridge board, at Cleveland Bridge, and Visit Hull and East Yorkshire, all of whom spent a lot of time and effort getting me up to the towers!
Aerial and ground camera by Octovision Media octovisionmedia.co.uk
Edited by Michelle Martin @mrsmmartin
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"Hey, Tom, do you want to go up the Humber Bridge?" Yes. Yes I do. And I'm amazed that I got access to the actual corrosion test gantries, because they're understandably sensitive about that!
2 days ago hmmmmmmmmm
Why would they be sensitive about it?
I can't imagine there is any information (regarding how their tests work and what their findings are) that they shouldn't be open about.
Ok I'm sure you have a DeLorean
But But....
Tom Scott has this video been private or unlisted or whatever for two days? That’s my theory haha
You get to go to all sorts of exciting places. New Zealand, America, Japan... and Hull.
The bridge isn't technically in Hull ;) from Barton to Hessle, but you probably know that
@@Roblilley999 You're the center of the party, aren't you?
I've been to that bridge and Hull. The bridge is better.
Don't forget Peniston
Don't forget Scunthorpe
(in b4 "please forget Scunthorpe")
"Corrosion cannot occur below 40% relative humidity"
This is that time where you learn something that will remain with you for the rest of your life that's infinitely valuable
The ideal solution would be vacuum but alas hehe. I also enjoyed when someone said you cannot skid over water while driving below 60km/h. That also stuck.
@@JuraIbis Vacuum might cause other problems such as off-gassing. Things like leather, wood and paper would be extra brittle.
@@JuraIbis For some reason I think leather would not do well in a vacuum. Probably has some needed moisture and being in a vacuum will bring that out. I do suppose if you aren't continually removing moisture from the initial vacuum sealing then it'd be fine.
@@JuraIbis I don't think that comment about not skidding below 60km/h is correct.
The more you know! Thank you!
You can trust Jim Mawson because he's an engineer with a Yorkshire accent, the most trustworthy combination
Bit like me lyk
Really? Then by god I’ll be trustworthy in 6 years time. I’m studying to become a mechanical engineer
Some would say just behind a Scots accent. Not me. I'm a Tyke!
Surveys have actually proven that Yorkshire and Scottish accents are some of the ones people trust the most when they're told to instinctively rate accents. They don't want us flying planes (I think the best accents for pilots were decided to be some variety of Southern, Edinburgh, and possibly also a Welsh accent?) but they definitely want us in charge of their engineering projects.
(Yorkshire lass here - grew up a handful of miles away from the Humber Bridge(
@@aim-to-misbehave5674 Presumably the Liverpudlian accent is someways back.
Jealous! Awesome shots.
Hi Practical Engineering!
269 flat earthers dislike this video 00:30
You are the reason I’m aiming for civil engineering when I go to college. Thank you for all your videos
Ur jealous of a bridge?
@@fbi7817 who wouldn’t be? Big, strong, hundreds depend on it for something it can easily provide, gets a full team of carers to make sure it doesn’t get too out-of-shape.
Thanks i will use this with my giant bridge
It's actually a good reason to climate-control a workshop or garage, especially in particularly humid climates. And as a side-benefit it cools off the space so it's more pleasant to work in.
It’s more useful than the polynomials stuck in my brain and the way my algebra 2 teacher tried to relate it to real life by asking one of the girls in my class “what if you are tending to your horses and there are 2 solutions?”
Chaitanya Singh you’ve got that a bit muddled, water-based corrosion CANNOT occur below 40% relative humidity :)
@@SamM-od3id oh shoot, my bad
@@alexls1923 what the hell does that mean?
I don’t feel so bad paying the toll price now
Motor bikers go free! Surely they should charge every other bike?
Tolls are theft!
Arent you giving away most of you money to the gov in the form of taxes anyway? In the UK
@@Virolaxion Two lines. One for evens and one for odds.
@@civishamburgum1234 Well in this case the tolls go towards the upkeep of the bridge, so no, no it isn't. You want to use the bridge, you should contribute to its maintenance.
Why does Tom always look like hes a school kid on a visit whenever he's wearing hi vis and a helmet
er, did you miss the best bit? Namely the opto-acoustic system that listens to the noises made inside each main cable and can identify, using Time Domain Reflectometry individual wires breaking and where in the long cable they have broken!
Did I just learn something from a RUclips comment?!
Are you pulling my cable or wot mate?
10/10 comment, thanks for sharing
That is what was used on the Golden Gate bridge too. This bridge design is rubbish, hence why we don't see new bridge built like that.
I've never met a smart mountain biker
@@Narayan_Patki you now have
The tops of the towers are further apart because of the curvature of the earth. That’s is awesome and really gives you a sense of the scale.
bUt ThE eArTh Is FlAt
Take this flat earth society!
@@lizardlegend42 The earth is Fiat? Ah, that explains the corrosion! ;-)
@@CheshireTomcat68 the earth being a fiat certainly explains why we're trying to get to mars
Flat earthers: *Angry mumbling*
Tom: “When it opened in 1981”
Me: Oh, well that wasn’t that long ago
Tom: “Nearly 40 years after it opened”
Me: Oh my god, I am so old
ikr, 2020 is 6 months away
Our perception of time is weird af
That must be incorrect. Everybody knows 1990 is roughly 10 years ago... always was, always will be...
@@antivanti Imma be 31 soon, time to add _'most painless way to commit suicide'_ to my bucket list
LENTE HORA, CELERITER ANNII (an hour passes slowly, the years pass quickly) is an inscription sometimes found on sundials. It gets bleaker with every passing year.
The older you get time does indeed travel more quickly, yet they say time travel is impossible, the people that say this must be young!
A quick thanks from a non-native English speaker.
Your videos always having subtitles not only held me in for as long as I've watched your content, it also probably contributed to my understanding of English as a whole.
A native brit complimented my speaking today, so I thought I'd let you know how much these little things matter :-]
Flat-Earthers hate this Bridge
The bridge isn't real, this was all done on a movie set. 😉
@@thehiddenninja3428 Hahaha.
@AlexGRFan97 except it only proved to the people that already know the answer. It's like any ideology (for example religion) it will be resisted almost always, no matter how much data is presented.
@@jries77 Woosh!
Maybe the towers aren't exactly straight and THAT is why they are a few centimeters different.
People from Hull speak with a distinctive accent which can make certain expressions ambiguous.
For instance, 'half hearted' can mean 'lacking enthusiasm' or 'I have just broken wind'.
B T we don’t really have a distinctive accent and only a small minority of us use them sentences.
@@lukechapman8550 we have a ridiculously strong accent
@@lukechapman8550 You don't have BT either.
Terry Dickinson unfollowed no
@@tangjtl499 read the comment again
Q: So how do you stop your bridge falling down?
A: We blow on the cables.
kerbls*
@@justintempert2882 Yes, it took me a while to figure that one out.
If it's good enough for my copy of Double Dragon, it's good enough for 17,000 tons of road.
A good blow will fix a lot of things
Tom Scott nowadays: "How to stop a colossal bridge corroding"
Tom Scott in 2013: "10 illegal things to do in London"
🎶We flew a kite in a public place🎶
so this is why RUclips insisted that I watch this. because I watched 10 illegal things about 4 times.
@@Tomensnaben 🎶 we flew a kite in a public place 🎶
Two drums a cymbal and a cliff
@spookq we flew a kite in a Publiccc place
As an Italian who travelled over the Morandi bridge two hours prior to its collapse, I felt this video, especially the closing.
Tom: "There's only concern where infrastructure upkeep isn't done."
Me, in the US: nods politely, begins sweating.
*Think of the I-10 bridge in Lake Charles, Louisiana where they've had to reduce it to 1 lane each way at 55 mph to reduce stress on the bridge because the main structural members are splitting, and the bridge has been pending a rebuild for 20 years due to lack of funding. Legitimately, that bridge could collapse catastrophically tomorrow.
@@brentsnocomgaming7813 I know, right? I mean, I don't really wanna get too political, but some people *_still_* act like the Infrastructure Bill - meant to upkeep and renovate the US freeways, railways, city infrastructure etc. - is just "reckless spending" and the "government being wasteful".
It's like, come on, after the Florida condo collapse it became glaringly obvious how dire the situation is. Some of our structures hadn't been assessed or checked on since at least a dozen years
Mackinaw Bridge in Michigan...
To sum up a documentary I watched recently in my own words most of the dams in the US are going to fail soon due to old age and lack of upkeep.
It's far more important to give tax breaks to billionaires who already have more than they can spend in 100 lifetimes.
Watched a 5 minute video about corroding Kerbals. Would watch again.
Can't wait for them to go into space.
Kerbals are a mix between gerbals and cables.....I wonder how they managed to get them to mate ha ha
Gerbils
I was but worried about them cutting up about 5 meters of Kerbal... At least we now know why Kerbals are so short.
Nooo, not Jebediah!
The Ponte Morandi bridge in Genoa collapsed last year. Its cables are embedded in concrete in an "innovative" and aesthetic design that not only hinders inspection, but also has no redundancies.
Al Bert
The bridge got privatised 20yr ago so maintenance became low on the list.
Concrete in tension is always a white knuckle subject. Totally dependent on the rebar, the pre-stressing, and of course the right stuff on the re-bar to prevent it slowly corroding away in the concrete.
Something similar happened to the aricebo telescope recently
@Tin Watchman it had gotten an update when the bigger floating part was put on top
It feels a bit odd that the noise reduction of the microphone is so good! We can clearly see its windy, but hear nothing of it, its rather uncanny
Dubbed over?
@@KrikitKaos certainly not, with the right equipment, cutting out wind noise entirely is relatively easy.
@@jsalexjs22, like fluffy mics?
I agree.
Also seems slightly off because the video is slightly out of sync with the audio. Only slightly though
A humble Tom on a Humber bridge...
A humble Tom on a Humber top..
That's what I call a humble bundle.
I like how the guy at 1 minute says "cables" so that it sounds like "Kerbals"! :D
The good old Hull('ull) accent.
Maybe I've lived in Hull too long but it just sounds normal to me
Sounds normal to me but I've never lived anywhere but Hull lmao
The good old Manley accent :D
"Steel does not rust below 40% humidity"
That sounds like some game mechanic in Minecraft or whatnot
It's almost as if game mechanics are based off real life...
@@idot3331 Ah, I always forget about the fact that I can irl summon lightning with my enchanted trident to strike a pig in order to turn it into a zombie pig.
After 2 years. I am prepared to use this... /gamemode creative
didn't work..
@@Deneberus You have an enchanted trident in real life??
I don't comment much, but what I will say is this video is absolutely what I need! I travel on the bridge on weekdays and I wondered what work was going on!
Nice
That opening drone shot is amazing!
I wonder if it was difficult to get the permission to fly the drone there (considering there's car traffic in the bridge).
@@zmast333 I don't think so
I love the little glimpses we get into Tom’s process with the extra sound bites at the end of some of his videos: like in this video him saying what shot he’s going to get next and saying he’s happy with the take. Just a simple thing about Tom’s videos that I always enjoy. Keep up the good work as always Tom!
Fun fact: at 17,000 tons, this entire near-mile-long bridge is only 1/4 the empty weight of an aircraft carrier, and only 1/30th the weight of a fully loaded container ship.
The deck between towers weighs 17000 tons, the entire Humber Bridge weighs over 500000 tons.
It's funny how much fun this is learn about as someone who is not even close to being an engineer.
I cycled across this bridge today and was wondering what the silver things were - I wondered if it was hydraulics to account for expansion and contraction, but this is fascinating!
The Humber Bridge has a special place in my heart
When we used to drive up to Bridlington from Cambridgeshire to visit family we'd always stop at the rest stop before the toll booth and enjoy a cup of tea and some Yorkshire ham rolls.
Those were good times ❤
Lovely to see the Humber Bridge on a popular channel! Every day I get to see this wonderful feat of engineering and it makes me proud to be from Hull
As an American living with a crumbling infrastructure, this terrifies me.
A solution to your crumbling infrastructure terrifies you? What?
@@IkeOkerekeNews no, the thing that terrifies me is that we don't spend money on infrastructure, and thus don't employ solutions like this.
Actually you do. Dehumidification systems have recently been fitted to the Cheapeke Bay Bridge, the Delaware Memorial Bridges, 10th Street Bridge in Pittsburgh and the Angus L MacDonald Bridge in Halifax, NS.
Nick Lamb 9% of bridges in the U.S. (over 50,000) are classified as 'structurally deficient' and our infrastructure is graded at a D+ (but 4 bridges got fixed, only 49,996 left to fund)
@@nicklamb1454 let's not pretend Americans know what Nova Scotia is
I'm form Germany and I did a 3 week long internship in Hull a couple of weeks after you went there. It's great seeing these shots again and kinda weird to know that I barely missed seeing you stand on a bridge that I was told about around a million times during my time at the city council
Every time that engineer said "cable" I heard "Kerbal". But other than that tiny accent thing, this was a FANTASTICALLY informative video about an aspect of bridge maintenance I would never have even thought of.
Wonder how many people are purely commenting on this because they're from Hull...
Matthew Marsden it’s not often we get something about the positives of Hull
@@ro5alia surprised there hasn't been a documentary on the spice heada of Queens Gardens yet to be honest!
My grandparents live right by the bridge, and I’ve seen the rectangles going along the cables and wondered what they are, now I know! Thanks for a fantastic video!
As much as I admire modern engineering, I am at awe with roman engineering that have structures still standing after two thousand years
They didn't use metal though, did they,stone and concrete doesn't corrode, it simply weathers slowly away
Thanks, now I'll always have a sense of fright whenever travelling through any bridges not knowing it's history of maintenance
New drinking game:
Take a shot every time you hear; "Kerbel"
The name of the game is "Kerbal Spares Progrum".
"The bridges elsewhere in the World that aren't inspected..." *cough *cough Morandi Bridge, Italy... *cough
Ah Italy, birthplace of the largest empire in Antiquity, great food, great art, and cant build bridges or win wars.
Came looking through the comments for ponte Morandi, was not disappointed.
I haven't heard of it, someone want to brief me? I have a feeling Google won't be brief
@@andrerenault A highway bridge colapsed due to corrosion in Genova, a major city in Italy, currently that segment of the highway is unaccessible limiting the traffic from the southern part of france.
turbodeeznuts The bridge in Genova, Italy collapsed exactly because this sort of care was not taken and there was apparently corrosion found in the cables and support structure.
Oooohhh I'm glad you're up there, not me !
Great video as always
Corrosion prevention idea: Coat the entire bridge in dehumidifier flakes from shoeboxes.
As a bonus, give a massive boost to the shoe industry.
The construction of the bridge itself is amazing. The maintenance done is great as well. At least you know your tax is going somewhere it counts.
Except actually the Humber bridge is a complete waste of money since there is little of interest on the south side. Traffic volumes are still way below what was predicted. The entire bridge was a bribe by politicians looking to win a general election. They even created a new county called Humberside to cover both sides, but gave up on that after a few years. At the risk of insulting people on the south side, it is a bridge to nowhere. They should have stayed with the ferry. When this bridge reaches the end of its life it likely will not be replaced, unless the situation has changed dramatically. It's a fine bridge, shame they built it here.
@@owensmith7530 as someone raised in the middle of nowhere NY, most of us know its the middle of nowhere and its not really an insult. (Personally i prefer the middle of nowhere to urban and suburban but to each their own)
Edit: looking at the area on Google earth you are 100% correct, the area south of the bridge is mostly farm country. And about 17km / 10mi upstream the river forks (merges?) And those 2 rivers would definitely be much easier to bridge over.
Personally i would say a 10mi drive is almost nothing, it would add about 20 min to your trip to detour to, so a ferry would just have to beat that in frequency to be more convenient, realistically the drive would be a bit longer since i just followed the center of the river and not the road network. It also looks to be the only bridge from their to the ocean, which is about 40km down stream, its hard to tell when UK rivers tend to get super wide and not have a distinction between river and bay. (I was shocked to learn the massive bay between whales and Cornwall is considered a river for its entirety)
@@jasonreed7522 The Humber estuary is too wide to bridge anywhere further downstream than this bridge. Also the water is fast flowing and the river bed constantly shifting, so more modern bridge designs like cable stay with multiple piers are not possible on this river.
Tom gets me to his video so quick it’s only 3 seconds after upload.
Except that it's queued up for publication a week or more in advance 😉
Gryph Lane woosh
@@GryphLane this time it was a couple of days, not a week
Ha!
Im just impressed of the sound quality with all that wind
The way that guy pronounces his Ts is really pleasant. I had no idea some people could casually enunciate a consonant that hard.
Human engineering is absolutely amazing. Thank you, Tom, your channel is one of the few I watch almost religiously! Almost, because it's more rational to watch them for the details :)
I'm very proud to say that both my grandad and dad worked on the Humber Bridges construction. My dad was actually on the crew that worked on the cables and wrapped them (I think)
Something I never expected is the 24hr requirement of an air pump system to maintain a bridge! Thanks for the education
I started watching your channel in 2016 and I’m glad to see that you are still making content and still seem just as interested in the topics you talk about.
Helps a bit that the architect didn't design the bridge to use concrete in-tension and to bury the steel directly within the wet concrete such that it could not be accessed.
The wedge-open procedure doesn't sound like the most wonderful thing in the world but it still sounds a far sight better than having to break open concrete or find where oxide jacking has exposed the cable for you.
What do suspension bridges and space programmes have in common?
Kerbals!
Sod that for a day at work. It made my knees wobbly just watching you up the tower.
You actually get used to the height fairly quickly if you are doing it all day.
Watching from Hull, great video !
same! :D
Mr Mawson has a fantastic accent. I love northern England.
Lad
A 2019 video on bridge corrosion ... was expecting at least a passing reference to the Morandi Bridge disaster in Genoa.
Italy strikes again!
this feels like something out of the Discovery channel (before they went all weird)
I live 5 minutes away from the Humber Bridge I'm so glad you did a video on it!!!
Those drone shots are amazing.
Ah yes, I too have a colossal bridge that I'd like to stop corroding, so this is just the video I was looking for. Thanks!
next thing you'll say that this was just pre-sale maintenance, won't you?
Won't corrode if you leave it in a shoebox under the bed
*Harvard wants to know your location*
Won’t hold up the bridge either
@@oxybrightdark8765 Let's think inside the box here--build a shoebox around the bridge, build a bed on top, and voilà, a bridge that won't corrode.
specially if its the world cup
Well it will corrode, you just won't notice or care
Awesome bridge design, with excellent inspection technique.
Whod have thought Id find a piece on corroding bridge cables so interesting :) !
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and seeing the Golden Gate at least once a day its so easy to forget that bridges like this are not all that commplace
I’m glad you came up to visit us! You’re covering The Deep next, right?
Nathaniel Little i’d so watch a Tom video about how they keep that ice wall frozen
Your videos always teach me something I didn't think I should have known. Thanks Tom.
Very interesting video! The accent of the bridge builder is interesting as well. His "cable" almost sounds like "Kerbel/Chervil".
Thanks to all involved for making this happen!
"Other bridges aren't doing so well"
Like the Geneva bridge here in Italy.
It collapsed.
That bridge was in Genoa, not Geneva.
Being from Hull I can’t count the amount of times I’ve driven over this bridge and now I know a bit more about it
This was completely new to me, and surprisingly interesting. I love that you make videos like these, please keep it up Tom!
Funnily enough I was driving along the a63 today and wondered what all of the scaffolding etc was for. Now I know cheers Tom
This video has renewed my concern for the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. I don’t think it has ever received proper inspection of its cables and it’s 92 years old and has been known to be in horrible, almost hazardous, condition for over 20 years.
Hooray for private companies
Historically the company who owns it has heavily restricted access for inspection by both MDOT and Transport Canada. They are notorious in the Windsor-Detroit area for their cheapness, disregard for the neighbourhoods near the bridge and willful ignorance of the hazards the bridge poses.
This is why the Ontario and Michigan governments are building a new bridge.
I watched a video of some teenagers climbing this bridge on RUclips.
Absolute madladism.
You have an amazing job Tom, visiting all these places and learning at the same time. Awesome content I learn so much.
Everything about this video is utterly fascinating! I learn so much from Tom Scott and his videos.
Damn it, I miss Dirty Jobs. Would've loved to see cable inspection process itself.
They should bring it back with Tom as the host!
1Slamalama1 yep. They tried doing Dirty Jobs while obviously avoiding being Dirty Jobs (Discovery owning the IP, brand, etc) and it didn’t work as well. Hard to know how much CNN dumbed the show down, but it always felt as if it was missing the - spirit? of Dirty Jobs.
Its not exactly exciting. Did this job on the forth road bridge last year. A lot of swinging sledge hammers for hours on end and not much else
@@DarthTella Tom and Matt - Dirty Jobs International. It would be awesome!
That is some impressive wind reduction. Thought you were ADRing it at the start.
You might have my favorite channel on RUclips. Keep up the great vids
It is wonderful that you get to make videos like this to share these things with us. We used to have Tomorrow's World, Panorama, QED, and the Open University evening broadcasts for content like this. Whilst much of those still exist (BBC should hang its head in shame for what it did to Tomorrow's World), Tom Scott is definitely high up on the informative broadcasts list now.
I look forward to your future series on Netflix /Prime /That new BBC-ITV streaming service, or wherever... Even if it just remains RUclips.
"It was thought that would be sufficient" ooooh boy, here comes the reason why it wasn't
they jinxed it
2:04 _Hexagons are the bestagons_
Thankyou Tom. Keep going, learning from you is always a pleasure.
I don't know if I love Tom's enthusiasm more than the astonishing drone footage in his videos. Maybe fifty-fifty
Tom, South African plugs are the best, they've got all the same features, but the fronts are blunt, so they hurt less when stepped on
Minneapolis checking in. The 35W bridge collapse was, for us, one of those "where were you when it happened?" moments. Now when we see a bridge appear to lack maintanence or fall into visual disrepair, a collective unease grips the city. Leadership is still letting it happen. The 10th Avenue bridge is a worrying sight right now, and while it is receiving some updates at the moment, these updates appear completely cosmetic. As far as I know, nothing is being done to renew the foundation. It's a 91 year old bridge with the Mississippi River nipping at its supports. The 35W bridge was half that age when it met its fate. I wish they'd just build a new one. It would be expensive and inconvenient, but nobody wants a repeat of 2007's tragedy. And it looks like we're going down that path at full speed.
I wasn't expecting to see you produce a video on something from my neck of the woods, it was a nice surprise.
I passed over the bridge the other day, I wondered what was happening on the wires. Nice to know they're still going strong.
this has been in place since at least 2010 as we did a project for college where we got access to the internal parts of the deck.
I'm having a hard time figuring out a scenario where your helmet would be of any help in case of an accident.
Its like a submarine on the inside of the bridge, very narrow with lots of metal to bang your head on! I went inside once and was glad I had one on
Thought that was a bus on the cable 2:50
@M M
I’m just imagining a GTA 5 mod that goes horribly wrong, where a bus goes a couple hundred meters off the path. Vertically. And the driver inside is perfectly calm
IT'S TOM BLOODY SCOTT ON THE HUMBER BLOODY BRIDGE!
Drove past wishing I knew what they were doing under those white sheets, and now I know thanks to you! Awesome
I always love tome videos that show the expertise we have in The uk and beyond that allow us all to go about our day to day.
It must be super hi tech x ray machine to check the cable. Plastic wedge.
Can I use this for bridge building games
if there's a humidity controller then I don't see why not except if the Dev is not that detail-specific
So cool! Didn't know this much went into maintaining it! Love these behind the scenes of civil engineering videos!
I couldn't find a tutorial anywhere! Thank you so much
I remember my electrochemistry classes from a few years back when the professor told us that the environment is a huge contributor to corrosion and it can be modified to stop it when using a sacrificial anode, usually magnesium, is not viable.
Tired: Kerbal Space Program
Wired: Kerbal Span Program
This is absolutely fascinating! Great film.
I love that your videos are a great length. None of that 10.01 rubbish.