I've been curious as to why it would have ultimately failed when so lightly loaded. (One bus and a handful of personal vehicles.)
Temperatures Wednesday night into Thursday morning were into the minus single digit range. Is it plausible to think that something could have fractured during that...
My understanding of bridge weight limits is that vehicles over the limit will cause further deterioration--not immediate failure. You should be able to drive 26 ton vehicles over that bridge all day long without it falling down. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
(Maybe I should phrase...
I grew up 5 or six miles from that bridge. I remember its predecessor, but I had to search to refresh my memory of the current structure, which agrees with the picture above.
Google street view shows it posted with a 26 ton weight limit.
Also, for what it's worth, from Wednesday night into...
" ...as far as I know the layers beneath the yard are a mixture of gravel, builders waste and soil.)"
It sounds like you're on some amount of fill. One of the Geotechnical experts might want to render an opinion on whether you can expect that to present a problem as far as sufficient support...
"I never met a driver that did not think that he was in full control of the situation (no matter what it was),..."
Which goes back to my comment earlier--I've learned that while I may be in full control of my own vehicle at all times, there can always be some element of "the situation" which...
I have a couple of thoughts, but first a disclaimer--I'm not an engineer, but as an excavating contractor I've spent a lot of time in the past 25 years playing in the mud. Also, I've not had any experience with *really* big equipment. (You list your discipline as "mining" so I'm assuming you're...
"As long as 99% of the drivers on the road DO NOT POSESS THE NECESSARY SKILLS OR PRACTICAL TRAINING to avoid getting into emergency situations, and/or getting out of them, AND those very same drivers consider themselves ABOVE AVERAGE, there will be no revolution in skill training. "
I think in...
At the risk of offering a suggestion that engineers may find abhorrent (that is to say, one that is non-mathematical, non-graphical, and not completly determined before the actual fact of construction begins)....
Why not lay every *other* block through the curved area of the wall (knowing that...
Thanks for the replies.
I did the Google search and got a tension headache from weeding through all the results that wanted me to go to some hot springs someplace and relax, but I did get a handle on the concept of "spring relaxation" as it applies to this question.
My original question was...
This is a topic that's been debated among some people I know, and having found this site it occured to me that there's no better group of people to ask than automotive engineers.
Is it bad for the suspension, to load a truck and then park it for any length of time? This is just a general...
Focht3 asked me, "What still bothers you?"
DRC's reply above pretty well sums it up: "Yet many inspectors and engineers are instant that compacion reach a particular value which in general is not arrived at by any rational anaysis...For roadways this is probably okay,..."
I've been fortunate...
I'm certainly not qualified to speak about what's allowable in California, but I can tell you that I've worked in certain jurisdictions where the driveway slope was subject to local regulations. Something like the first five feet behind the curb was not allowed to exceed a certain percentage...
I stumbled across this site only a few days ago and I've found quite a lot of interesting topics being discussed. I must admit that this one is the one that most caught my attention. I must also admit that I'm not what most of you would call an "Engineer". "Operating Engineer", perhaps. I've...
