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Big Dig Failed Bolt Joint Details

Big Dig Failed Bolt Joint Details

Big Dig Failed Bolt Joint Details

(OP)
Can anyone share the design details of this joint(s) for the slab that fell?  Was this a Hilti Anchor system in tension?

This just off AP Newswire:

Report: Big Dig Ceiling Designers Wanted 4 Bolts Per Hanger but Were Persuaded to Use 2

BOSTON (AP) - Big Dig project managers persuaded the designer of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel ceiling to reduce by half the number of bolts supporting each ceiling hanger, The Boston Sunday Globe reported.

The newspaper reported it obtained a 1998 memo in which an official of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the joint venture that supervised the Big Dig, expressed confidence that two bolts would hold up the concrete ceiling panels.

Portions of the Big Dig remain closed after four three-ton concrete ceiling panels fell in the I-90 connector tunnel and crushed a car on July 10, killing 39-year-old Milena Del Valle. Del Valle's husband and daughter filed a wrongful death lawsuit last month against the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and nine companies associated with design and construction of the project.

Investigators trying to determine a cause of the accident have focused on the bolt-and-epoxy system holding up the ceiling panels in those tunnels.

The ceiling designer, Gannett Fleming Inc., had planned to use four-bolt anchor plates.

RE: Big Dig Failed Bolt Joint Details

Hopefully the lawsuit will cost the AE FAR more than the $$ they saved.  The tech. details of so many failures are hidden from the public as a result of "the settlement".  Looks like that won't be the case here.

"I'm that dog who saw a rainbow, only none of the other dogs believed me." from "Kate and Leopold"

RE: Big Dig Failed Bolt Joint Details

there is a huge thread over in the structural forum on this. Hilti is making the replacement equipment. Power Fasteners supplied the original epoxy acrylate (vinyl ester) anchor material that failed. Epoxybot has the skinny on the chemistry and why it was not appropriate.

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=159632&page=1

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