Case study on an historical Civil Engineering failure - Essay Example

After continuous investigations that lasted over 14 months, the investigating bodies concluded that the collapse was prompted by the inadequacy in load capacity of gusset plates that had been used to construct the bridge. The problem of the connecting gusset plates to the truss members had been a design problem, and the error was caused by the designing firm, Sverdrup and Parcel Associates Corporation (Higgins et al. 988). It was assessed that the loading particulars incorporated a mixture of substantial additions in the total weight of the whole bridge construction that had been caused by past modifications to the bridge.

It was also assessed that the traffic on that day of the collapse added on to the construction loads on the bridge. The evidence used to assess and investigate the damage of the bridge has been reviewed in this report. In the year 2007, on the evening of August 1st at around 18:00 hours, the 1,900 foot long I-35 bridge situated on top of the Mississippi River, Minnesota underwent a disastrous failure. The bridge deck truss that measured around 1,500 feet collapsed together with some other adjacent sections of the bridges approach spans that had been sustained by the deck truss.

Media reports showed that there were over 190 individuals who were on that bridge at the time of the collapse. A total of 14 fatalities were reported, with approximately 150 individuals sustaining various injuries. It was also reported that a total of 111 motor vehicles had been on the bridge when it collapsed (Feldman 541). A handful of those vehicles was recovered from the water. The figure below shows the collapsed bridge on the morning after the collapse. The NTSB commissioned a team of experts to investigate the accident scene.

The investigations commenced immediately on the next day after the disastrous collapse of the bridge. The complete investigation with extensive documentation and analysis of the destroyed bridge were presented to the Senate and