This could spoil your day if you were the engineer....
 

or installer. Groat Road is a major artery between north and south Edmonton. The bridge was spanning the road 102nd ave which runs east west. Apparently the wind was blowing quite strong when they were attempting to install the steel girders. Dial up Girder collapse closes groat road indefinitely.
Guy

Chinese steel!

How in the world did that happen?

Wow, yeah, I was looking at the 4 bent portions thinking they looked like they were supposed to be like that.

It must have been REALLY windy! ;)

Found some decent pics

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/cms/binary/10893908.jpg

http://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legac...2659059625.jpg

It looks like the blocking or beam to beam ties were not installed which allowed the beams to fall over and buckle. I can understand if one beam collapsed but three beams collapsing leads me to believe they were not installed properly where each beam would be blocked before the next beam was installed. So maybe not the engineer's fault but rather the construction crew's fault.

How to work around this...

I see one direction of traffic flow will lose a lane for a short bit, then pick it back up again. That was easy!

"We meant to build it like that, it's a curvy road like your wife"

Looks fishy to me, I'd have a camera on the crane operator at all times.

Supernatural events don't happen to bridges.

Paging Vash...

JA

Probably a lot like building a house. The framing itself is not very stable until the drywall and sheathing are in place. The engineering of this bridge may have been fine. The construction process seems to be at fault. They needed to consider one more "what if?".

I'm serious, where did the steel come from??

A high occupancy and a japanese rice drifting lane?

This PC stuff is getting out of hand.

Harmonics.

Mothman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...ys/men_ani.gif

Video:

Groat Road closed indefinitely | Watch News Videos Online

I'm not an engineer, nor have I slept in a Holiday Inn in a long time, but looking at those images reminds me of rail lines which have been bent in an earthquake. I don't think compressive force is the culprit here. The girders also look like they have bent in the manner of bi-metalic strips which are used in thermometers and thermostats.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that the stiffening ribs on four of those girders are not matched and with severe cold the ribs on one side did not contract at the same rate as their partners on the other side of the beam, resulting in torsion.

At any rate: Oops!

Best
Les

Magneto was battling with the Xmen

I have to agree with OldE that those girders look like earthquake damage. They say it will be weeks before the full cause of the distortion is established.

Having been in the Edm. area for just over 30 years the Groat Road is a very special piece of road. It goes uphill one way and downhill the other. It has serious turns that give motorcyclists and sports car drivers a huge thrill to drive fast.

I have witnessed a young man standing next to his new VW sitting on its roof. Obviously going too fast. I have seen a whole slew of motorcyclists speeding up the hill only to be stopped en masse by the police at the top of the hill for speeding.


This will cause serious traffic disruption in our city for at least a year until the Groat Road is open.

Guy

I am a professional engineer licensed to work in Alberta.

My 5 minute review of this would lead me to initially look at how these were supported when they bent. Another thought is that they were placed in compressive loading from a bank on either end starting to slip.

I doubt it was a temperature effect - you would need to have very different temperatures from top to bottom on those beams to do that.

The above does not constitute my professional opinion but this is likely where I would begin my investigation if I was involved in the failure analysis based on what I have seen in the above photos and video.