More on the Minneapolis bridge collapse
I-35 Bridge Collapse: Curious onlookers view the fallen I-35 structure from the 10th Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is scheduled to make an announcement today regarding the cause of the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August.
Fallen I-35 Bridge
Courtesy Mark Ryan
A report in the New York Times says investigators have traced the source of the catastrophic failure to a design flaw in the gussets, the common steel plates that connect the angled beams of many US bridges.
Gusset plate visible in the I-35 bridge wreckage.
Courtesy Mark Ryan
Sources in the report say the gussets used in the Minneapolis span weren’t structurally sound enough to meet safety margins even in the 1960s. Further repairs and renovations over the ensuing decades added even more weight and stress to the structure causing some of the gussets to snap finally. The flaw, according to the NSTB, has not been found in other existing US bridges.
The final report on the cause of the collapse won’t be released for several months, but today’s news conference should shed some light on the direction investigators are moving.
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It's a little old, but here's an article from Popular Mechanics about how the I-35 bridge collapse is goading engineers to build stronger bridges.
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