Structural Success/Failure

Transportation Success:

Gateshead Millennium Bridge

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is located between Gateshead and Newcastle, England, and is built over the River Tynes.

The Construction began in 1998. The opening of the bridge to the public was on September 17th, 2001. The structure is made out of reinforced concrete and steel. The construction took about 3 years. The bridge itself was constructed on the bank of the river and it was raised by the worlds largest floating water crane at the time (Asian Hercules II) onto the platform to allow it to tilt.

The bridge is known as a Bowstring Arch bridge, meaning that the arch of the bridge is held by tension with wires attached to the base of the bridge. The arch is held by 18 tensioned wires.

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is an innovation because of its unique "blinking eye" effect to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross the Tyne river as well as to allow boats up to 82ft tall to pass underneath by tilting.

Gateshead isn't very big at only 26ft wide, 413ft long, and 164ft tall from the base to the highest point of the arch.

The cost of building this beautiful structure was about 22 million pounds or roughly $26,825,571.

Wilkinson Eyre and Gifford were the two company's responsible for designing and building the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Both companies received an award for the design and building of the bridge. Wilkinson Eyre won the 2002 Royal Institute of British Architects Sterling Prize, and Gifford won the 2003 IstuctE Supreme award.

The Bridge itself won numerous awards such as the Outstanding Structure award from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering, as well as the 2002 award of excellence. The bridge was also shown on the 1 pound coin in 2007.

Other awards listed here

This Bridge was very successful because of its unique design and mechanics. It is going to be a head turner for years to come!

Link to the Success Project

References:

Structural Failure:

Banqiao Dam

The Banqiao Dam was located in Henan Province, China. The Dam was built over the Ru river because of massive flooding in the Huai River.

The construction began in April, 1951 and ended in June, 1952. The Structure was made out of clay and it was 79ft tall. The Dam crest (top) was 380ft above sea level. After construction was complete there was noted cracks In the structure and in the Sluice Gates. A team of engineers were assembled to address and fix the issue... The Dam was repaired and it was dubbed "The Iron Dam", even though its structure was made from clay.

I thought it was important to mention a Hydrologist that was on the design team for the Banqiao Dam, Chen Xing, who was against aspects of the dam. He thought 12 sluice gates would have been the correct amount but instead he was outvoted by the design team and there were only 5 sluice gates put onto the dam. This man was later removed from the design team.

The Dam was able to hold a whopping 492 million m^3 of water, with a flood water backup of about 375 million m^3 of water. It was said that the dam was able to withstand a once-in-a-1000-year flood. Which is a flood that would only likely occur once every 1000 years which is actually pretty good.

The main reason the Banqiao dam failed on the 8th of August, 1975, was because of the Typhoon Nina. This storm produced a once-in-2000-years flood which devastated the dam. The storm was producing 7.46in of rain an hour. After the abundance of water built up in the dam it finally gave away. One reason could have been because of the lacking amount of sluice gates. But regardless the dam was bound to fail because of the significant downpour. Why is the failure of the Banqiao dam important you ask? Because it was the cause of 171,000 casualties. Recently a new Dam was built in its place.