Im as far from an engineer as you can get, but, That’s exactly how I’d expect the bridge to fall. The ship took out the “keystone” and caused the whole thing to fail. The beams from both sides are joined together on that pillar and when their support was taken out they collapsed in.
Hydraulic engineer here, not structural so take it with a grain of salt. If we design bridges to take that kind of impact, the entire US transportation budget will be lucky to build one every 10 years. Everything is a balance of risk vs cost; with enough money anything is possible, but design criteria are selected so that a bridge will survive any expected event in its design life, and I’m pretty sure a 100,000 ton impact to a pier isn’t currently and will never be one of the design criteria.
Yes please. Still the greatest TV series ever made.
Cost and risk play into it, but the forces for these vessels are included in modern designs. Can be a combination of dolphins and the pier itself to resist the forces. (Or getting the piers out of the water or to some place where the vessel would be grounded if that's an option and is cost-effective). They are huge forces to design for. Also, generally there is a plinth that goes up high enough in modern bridges which makes it a solid chunk of concrete where you would expect the vessel to impact. This bridge doesn't appear to have that, and the relatively little column(s) that got struck had no chance of resisting the load.
Guess I learned something today. Coastal engineering is a different beast, and obviously the size of potential impacts to a bridge superstructure on a river in Montana are orders of magnitude less than that container ship. I still have a hard time imagining a concrete plinth that could take that kind of impact without suffering substantial damage, right? The bridge probably doesn't collapse in that scenario but it would still be a huge closure while the plinth was repaired/replaced.
I should clarify that my statement is true assuming the vessel was of a typical size and going a typical speed as would be expected in the area. Being a major port, I assume this was a typical vessel that you would expect to see coming in or out. A vessel study would be done to know size, weight, speed of ships going in/out. Distance of pier from channel would play into design forces. In this case, it was the main pier, so would've had a very high design force. The forces are eye-popping when compared to those that you would design for a barge that's travelling on the Mississippi River for example. I don't know if there are any examples of vessels like this hitting a modern bridge. I have seen the result of a barge hitting a brand new bridge pier. The bridge definitely won. But that is a different magnitude load. The design for an extreme event like this would be for survival of the bridge...not necessarily serviceable condition, so it could certainly mean closure depending on the condition. If dolphins are used, it would hopefully minimize damage to the pier itself, and repair/replacement of the dolphins could be done while keeping the bridge open to traffic.
Shouldn’t we invade Singapore?
It is silly to view it as simply an obvious choice between A and B. That is a world that is decoupled from reality. I'm sure ultimately Maersk, its insurance companies, and various other other re-insurnace companies will have to pick up the bill. As they should. But that will take time and lawyers and more time. What has to be done NOW is to investigate the cause, remove the old bridge, and then redesign and build a new bridge. The US Government is the only group with the scale, skills, and money to get the massive logistics of a project like that done ASAP. The longer that port is inoperable, fully or partially, the more we all suffer because it impacts the economy.
The Army Corps of Engineers aren’t available? I guarantee they will find someone to lead this project very very quickly.
My point is they will be made available. That is the advantage of the government stepping it.
The Government never does anything quickly including the Corps...pretty sure they are still fixing stuff in New Orleans from Katrina...full disclosure former USACE civilian employee. It's not really the Corps fault they are caught up in the Govt budget cycle. It will take at least 2 years for the complete funding to be approved.
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