After a routine inspection Tuesday, officials with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) announced that the Hernando de Soto Bridge would be closed due to a crack on the bottom side of the bridge truss.
-Murray
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Just get one of them illegal mexicans to weld it up . They want the work.
ReplyDeleteWE NEED TO PRINT AND SPEND FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS ON INFRASTRUCTURE, NOW! IT'S A CRISIS!!!
ReplyDeleteJoe Biden, Kamala Harris, the Democrat Party and America's labor unions, May 12, 2021.
$0.37 of which will be designated to repair the bridge in question, as its closure only inconveniences the rabble, and not persons of quality.
DeleteAlthough the break in the bridge looks serious, it probably is not. The break is not in a key structural element, namely the main truss which is overhead and supporting the roadway by hangers. This is a member supporting the roadway, which is suspended from the main truss, and there is lots of redundancy here. Although the bridge is not in danger of imminent collapse, the break must be fixed. They need to get a welder and some jacks to realign the two ends of the break. A generous bead of weld all the way around will most likely fix this problem. Of course the proper calculations must be made. It may turn out that that welding additional plates may be required to beef up that area.
ReplyDeleteI’d toss a couple scab plates along with that “ generous bead of welds”.
DeleteI agree as to the square tube having little strength to the entire structure, if you zoom in you will see there is just a small amount of connecting bolts to the vertical beam on left, but a good, and smart, engineer has to figure out the why. Why did this happen. And if it is a cosmetic support system for, let's say the sidewalk and railing assembly, then there must be more points of failure, leading to a less than robust original design. The bridge is about 42 yrs old, these types of systems generally don't last as long as the main structure, but should not fail such as shown.
DeleteThey will rust out, but should not fracture out.
Daddy-o
That's no crack. That's a clean break! Whoever engineered the bottom trusses to be angles should have went with I beams or square tubing. But hey, that's just me, and I'm not a doctor. I just play one on TV. Ohio Guy
ReplyDeleteThey're going to want to understand why this break happened to begin with, and that's probably going to trace all the way back to understanding its true metallurgy. This will no be a quick fix, although the ultimate repair will probably go fairly quickly once they satisfy themselves that there is no underlying, more serious, engineering problem (and I hope this is the case). Non-destructive inspection procedures will take a while, too, looking for other similar failures.
ReplyDeleteThat's a bit more than a crack!
ReplyDeleteThat's a type of crack known as a "break".
ReplyDeleteI use that bridge regularly, in a loaded semi. Usually just under 80K. Will a life vest fit under a seatbelt?
ReplyDeleteLet's ask for an other trillion dollars for 'infrastructure'.
ReplyDeleteOne million for the bridge, the rest as payoffs to our buddies.
There's a great novel called Train Man by Peter Deutermann about a disgruntled guy who thinks of clever ways to destroy things like bridges.
ReplyDeletePARALLEL LIES by Ridley Pearson.
Delete(Great minds think alike.)
Had a neighbor who worked for the Arkansas DOT when that bridge was being built in the early 1970's. He would load up his big dark green Chevy wagon with photo equipment about every 2 weeks or so and go over there to take pictures from every conceivable angle, including from the water immediately below. His photographs were to be cataloged and saved as evidence of the progress of construction. Chances are he would have shot the problem area underneath the bridge. Rip, Johnnie Gray.
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