Ars OpenForum
News & Discussion
Bridge collapses put transportation agencies’ emergency plans to the test
Thread starterJournalBot Start dateYesterday at 1:12 PM
Jump to latest
Reply
Jump to new
Ignore
Watch

•••
Agencies need to build or find excess vehicle capacity before a bridge fails.

See full article...
Upvote
0 (0 / 0)
Downvote
Quote
JournalBot
Written byJournalBot Ars Legatus Legionis
Subscriptor++
Prev
1
5
6
7
Next
Sort by date Sort by votes
xoa
Ars Legatus Legionis
18y
11,941
Subscriptor++
Yesterday at 3:52 PM
#161
rabidk said:
As a practicing long-span bridge engineer, this is absolutely correct. It is not feasible to economically design a bridge to directly resist vessel impact.

It comes down to energy transfer and dissipation. Based on fundamental physics, the force of the impact is a function of mass times acceleration, or rate of change of distance over time (F = MA = ML*t^2) . The longer the vessel is deaccelerated, the smaller the force.