3 ms·

Even with unlimited budgets for inspections, repairs, and replacement, if we do not understand and anticipate the failure mechanisms, we will have unanticipated

by kbutler 10y ago

Even with unlimited budgets for inspections, repairs, and replacement, if we do not understand and anticipate the failure mechanisms, we will have unanticipated failures. Specifically for I-35W, "photos from a June 2003 inspection of the bridge showed gusset-plate bowing" but apparently the inspectors didn't realize they needed to be watching for that. "...inspectors did not routinely check that safety features were functional." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge#Investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge...

knz 10y ago
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that Governor Pawlenty was responsible for the collapse - it was a combination of engineering, not funding inspections/repairs/replacement adequately, and bad luck.
- code_duck 10y ago
  Mainly it was that they had parked 270 tons of construction equipment and concrete on top of the bridge, and that they had added 2 inches of pavement over the years. In addition the original design or construction was deficient and some metal plates that should have been 1 inch were 1/2 inch. I drove over that bridge not long before it collapsed, and marveled at how they had concrete and trucks lined up from one end to the other in a closed lane.
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    > added 2 inches of pavement over the years yeah that's what scares me most, infrastructure is built to the cheapest bidder that can satisfy safety requirement that often don't account for aging I've recently passed under two (!) overpass that failed at different times due to lack of maintenance, and every time I'm in queue on top of a bridge it scares the heck out of me watching everyone tailgating each other instead of leaving some margin to the car ahead.
Sunset 10y ago
>but apparently the inspectors didn't realize they needed to be watching for that. Could we use neural nets to help the inspectors?
- tesseract 10y ago
  Sorry but I have to: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
  - Sunset 10y ago
    Hey, with some domain specific knowledge maybe we could teach it what the various failure modes of the materials used look like. Have drones with webcams circle the bridge. It would surely speed up the process and may alert to something the humans overlooked.

by kbutler 10y ago

knz 10y ago

Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that Governor Pawlenty was responsible for the collapse - it was a combination of engineering, not funding inspections/repairs/replacement adequately, and bad luck.

code_duck 10y ago
Mainly it was that they had parked 270 tons of construction equipment and concrete on top of the bridge, and that they had added 2 inches of pavement over the years. In addition the original design or construction was deficient and some metal plates that should have been 1 inch were 1/2 inch. I drove over that bridge not long before it collapsed, and marveled at how they had concrete and trucks lined up from one end to the other in a closed lane.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  > added 2 inches of pavement over the years yeah that's what scares me most, infrastructure is built to the cheapest bidder that can satisfy safety requirement that often don't account for aging I've recently passed under two (!) overpass that failed at different times due to lack of maintenance, and every time I'm in queue on top of a bridge it scares the heck out of me watching everyone tailgating each other instead of leaving some margin to the car ahead.

Sunset 10y ago

>but apparently the inspectors didn't realize they needed to be watching for that. Could we use neural nets to help the inspectors?

tesseract 10y ago
Sorry but I have to: https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
- Sunset 10y ago
  Hey, with some domain specific knowledge maybe we could teach it what the various failure modes of the materials used look like. Have drones with webcams circle the bridge. It would surely speed up the process and may alert to something the humans overlooked.