MSP bridge collapse...
 

:td: :noes:

Totally not cool... I've been on that thing too...

Work is going to get busy...

i feel bad for the guys who put their stamps on that one.

That bridge is ~2mi from my sister's house. She and her husband were planning on heading that way at the time of the collapse, but she had too much stuff to finish at work. Pretty crazy.

All initial signs point to damage done during the resurfacing performed the day previous.

Errrr....

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/02/bri...ure/index.html

The plane aspect makes me worry for the engineer

I can't say much, because I'm being dragged into the detailed investigation, but, like all failures, this is looking to be an unfortunate overlapping of faults from several sources.

By the way, 16% of all bridges in the US are classified as structurally deficient. Doesn't mean we can close them all. I just hope we don't have too many of these types of accidents to wake up the DOTs, and lead them away from their "lowest bidder" requirement and segregated approach to design and construction.

edit: If you want a real scare about the state of our bridges, read the ASCE State of the Infrastructure report card. Or, there was an interesting article published in the August 2003 Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities by some guys at OSU that does some statistical analysis of US bridge failures. Scary stuff

Who are you with?

Officially, I'm an independent forensic engineering and failure investigation contract consultant, but I work mainly with a few firms and public agencies in particular, who don't like to broadcast that they farm out some of their work ;)

edit: what a mouthful. Ick

Thats funny cause anyone in engineering knows that everyone farms everything, even huge firms. But no one likes to say it. Its especially funny then business for one firm is down and all the consultants are suddenly next door.

It's not the other engineers we have to keep quiet to...it's when you're dealing with high-profile catastrophes and governments are involved. That's when the ambulance-chaser equivalents and media come out searching for anywhere to point a finger. "What, don't you trust your own employees? Or are you just too cheap?"

I just finished up a project for the Japanese government, and you wouldn't believe how hush-hush I have to be about that one. Things are even more sensitive over there.

Just remember...the technical side of engineering is the easy part. Any trained monkey (read: tech school grad.) can crunch numbers or analyze a model. It's people that cause real the challenges.

Oh i know. When i was with the DOE doing facility audits, we weren't able to talk to employees because of the fucked up rules they had.

the finger pointing was actually a part of the deterrent to getting my PE license! EFF THAT.

Yea, but the trick is to have it and not use it :)

In light of this tragedy someone wrote an article about the 110 bridges in CO that are on a "watch list." One particularly high volume stretch will become a 200-300 million dollar project when it is renovated/replaced. We currently have $35 million budgeted for bridges this year. Now with all the money we spend on homeland security so that terrorists don't blow up bridges and what not, what's the fucking point when there's no room in the budget to keep them from coming down on their own? Fucked up.

Atlanta, were you part of the investigation into the C470 overpass failure near Golden that killed a family?

Nope.

As to your other point...it's been common knowledge in the civil engineering community for decades that the infrastructure is basically dead. And they haven't kept it a secret...they've been lobbying this whole time. But estimates are that it would cost many trillions of dollars to get us to a passing grade of "C"

Well and lets be honest, people who work for state infrastructure are usually the C students of Civil Engineers, and Civil engineers are the "C"s of the engineering world.

Now now, no need to get personal...there are exceptions to every stereotype ;)

thats true, but there's a reason stereotypes exist in the first place :)

This coming from the Jew ;)

Holy Sh!t. Do Jews hold a "Hi, I'm a Jew" sign or something?

:dunno: whoops

First of all, I'm really sorry for all the victims and families of the victims.

Second: @Loki - who do you think are the "A"s of the engineering? Lets say you think the machine-building industry engineer - let's try to let them build a bridge... oooops....

Have a look at this -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ucdeMillau.jpg

It's the Millau Viaduct - hundrets of civil engineers did the planning and supervising there. All of them the "C"s... I don't think so....

P.S.: Of course I'm a civil engineer too, so I had to write this. :cool:

Ah hell w/ that bridge.. they coulda just made a road that served the same purpose lol

not even gonna touch that one

Haha i did for a while. My avatar was "iJew" with kyle from south park, And alot of the Jewish stereotypes are true; I'm extremely cheap and have a huge cock but it just comes with the territory

As for engineers in my mind here hows it goes

1/2 mechanical and electrical (goes back and forth)
3 Civil Engineers
4 Industrial
5 Manufacturing
6 Construction.

And there are exceptions to every rule :)

Ouch...chemical doesn't even make your list :gay:

i havent decided on chemical engineers yet. Whats the difference between a chemical engineer and a chemist?

or aerospace.

<-- former ae major

Well AE i would put with mechanical just specialized

That's like asking what the difference is between a mechanical engineer and a physicist.

Alright...I'm outta here. I took this thread way off topic. Bridge collapse is tragic.

See i disagree, i think they are the same. Just ones more practical.

At my school, mech and mfg engineering have the same types of courses, but mfg has higher levels of them, higher job placement (99.5%) and higher starting salary. If it wasn't for those things, I'd be a ME major.

Really? thats amazing to me.

Manufacturing engineers at my school dont even take calcIII let alone diff eq, fluids, and heat transfer.

I think they have a tech degree not an engineering degree

Is your school ABET accredited?

Yeah it's accredited and was recently designated a polytechnic university. I don't have to take calc III, but the ME's don't even have to take calc II. I'm taking diff eq this year and I believe the fluid dynamics stuff comes later. I've mostly been doing a ton of materials (Chem of materials, engineering materials etc) classes so far.

What school do you go to?

all AEs are former AEs. at cal poly it was the #1 engineering degree to bail out of.

<--- Mechanical

What?!? I had to take up to Calc 3 along with all the other math classes, 2 diff eq's, 2 engineering maths, etc. ABET accredited also. :vash:

But I'd rather take a math class than one of the liberal arts classes. "Fortran" was my foreign language credit! I was lucky enough to get into "short story" my senor year, it almost offset the horror of "medieval women" junior year. :)

<--- Mechanical too.

Gen Eds ruined my GPA... religions of the eastern world killed me! so did western civ.

Both night classes from 6-9.... happy hour was 430-6... i slept alot in those classes.

I had to take all those classes as well... AND write a thesis for my B.S.

Mechanical for the win.

We refered to the Mfg Eng. program as M.Easy because they didn't have to take any of the harder classes.

oh yeah oh yeah well I minored in philosophy! put that in your Dasein and smoke it.


night classes blow. we had a bio class that was only offered 7-10pm Tues & Thurs. I decided to take it for a grade because pass/fail required getting a C or better. I didn't waste many nights in that class room and left happily with my D.

mechanical myself, probably going to switch to manufacturing though, better/more job oppertunities

at my school, OIT, mech e's take up to calc III (differential, integral, vector)

while manufacturing eng take only I and II

Wow, good for you Matt. I thought about it until the first philosophy class and got my ass handed to me. Oh well.

My wife has a B.S. in Engineering Management with a specialization in Mechanical Engineering as opposed to my official B.S.M.E. Basically a manufacturing engineer; and yes she has more job opportunities, but then again she is a very smart female engineer and I'm sure that helps :)

Thesis? What was yours? We all had to do "senior projects" that took all of senior year and had to result in a substancial physical project and 2 senior project reports (one for each semester). I did the drivetrain on the AIAA/NASA lunar rover project. Won NASA's best engineering design, 2002 :)

Who here took the FE exam? Another requirement for graduation :(

Hopefully the people who designed this bridge.

Im taking it soon, and hints?

It's been 5 years since I took it so I don't remember anything relevant. They give you a nice equation booklet that I still use today.

The problems are not as hard as maintaining the desire to complete the test. The last hour or two fatigue sets in and you just don't care much anymore. :) I didn't "study", just sorta reviewed everything the day before.

Make plans for getting drunk after the test; you'll need it after that amount of boredom. And don't finish early...they won't let you out. Also, don't waste your time by studying or reviewing at all.