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No such list is really complete without the first rendition of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) http://en.
by CaptainZapp 12y ago
No such list is really complete without the first rendition of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)
For reasons, which become immediately obvious, it was lovingly nick named "Galopping Gertie"
- jacquesm 12y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw Incredible how much of a beating it took before it finally collapsed. It's also a lot more flexible than you'd expect.
- ColinWright 12y agoIf you watch a speeded up version you can see a torsion wave travel down from one tower to the other, and then reflect back again. Quite impressive.
- jacquesm 12y agoSomeone made a wind based energy generation system based on the same principle but the name escapes me, it was all over the news a couple of years ago.
- bargl 12y agoI was looking for this in the list and was disappointed not to see it. This was emphasized multiple times during my degree. The point of introducing this catastrophe to us was to show that there are lives in our hands and we have to do our best to keep people safe. These were structures and aircraft classes so the point was extremely important.
- sparky_z 12y agoWas that really a "miscalculation", though? I thought it was a never-before-seen aerodynamic effect that nobody could have predicted in advance. It's not as though the engineers incorrectly declared it safe against torsional-mode aerodynamic flutter.