Tacoma Narrows Bridge Concepts

Frommer's Washington State

by Karl Samson · 2 Nov 2010 · 388pp · 211,314 words

/28/10 8:43 PM explore the area. While distances here are not great, missed ferries and traffic backups at the twin spans of the Tacoma Narrows bridges can add significantly to travel time. Leave plenty of room in your travel schedule for unforeseen delays. 7 BAINBRIDGE ISLAND SOUTH PUGET SOUND & WEST SOUND

…

, but rather a long fiordlike extension of Puget Sound). Wash. 16 connects the peninsula with I-5 at Tacoma via the two spans of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Wash. 3 connects the peninsula with U.S. 101 west of Olympia and continues north to the Hood Canal Bridge, a floating bridge that serves

…

:30pm. GIG HARBOR 45 miles S of Seattle, 30 miles S of Bremerton, 45 miles N of Olympia On the far side of the two Tacoma Narrows bridges from Tacoma is the quaint waterfront town of Gig Harbor. With its interesting little shops, art galleries, seafood restaurants, fleet of commercial fishing boats, and

…

here in 1867 and soon Gig Harbor was a thriving fishing village of Scandinavians and Croatians. Essentials GETTING THERE Gig Harbor lies just across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from Tacoma off Wash. 16. 206 10_607510-ch07.indd 20610_607510-ch07.indd 206 9/28/10 8:43 PM9/28/10 8:43

Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America

by Henry Petroski · 2 Jan 1995

under Modjeski on the Delaware River Bridge, and virtually all other large American suspension bridges were to be designed in the same way—until the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed the very year it was completed, in 1940. But this is getting ahead of the story. 7 When the Manhattan Bridge opened, a fourth

…

George Washington, Bronx-Whitestone, Tacoma Narrows, and Mackinac bridges.” Leon Moisseiff (photo credit 5.20) II The twenty-eight-hundred-foot main span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge made it the third-longest suspension bridge when it was completed in 1940. In keeping with the engineering aesthetic and economic thinking of the times

…

it was much narrower than that of the New York span. The combination of a longer span with shallower depth and narrower width made the Tacoma Narrows Bridge more flexible than any other. Nevertheless, the two-lane crossing of the Narrows, about thirty miles south of downtown Seattle, provided a reasonable highway alternative

…

first two weeks of operation was twice what engineers had expected. A bridge across the Narrows had been proposed as early as 1933 by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Company, which had obtained a franchise and was then seeking capital. However, the growing sentiment for publicly owned bridges and utilities led to a competing

…

the bridge, including the stiffening truss, was to be only thirty-nine feet—a remarkably narrow deck relative to the length of the bridge. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, when it was opened in July 1940 (photo credit 5.21) As consulting engineer, Moisseiff was asked to study the Highway Department’s design, and

…

of the very slender Tacoma design, whose construction loan was awaiting approval. Condron reported that Davis “felt reasonably confident that the lateral deflections of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as designed and determined by Mr. Moisseiff would be in no way objectionable to users of the bridge.” As if to document as best he

…

of “expansion” for “suspension” into the title of the paper by Moisseiff and Lienhard may have indicated Condron’s fundamental unwillingness to concede that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was stiff enough. Nevertheless, the weight of evidence presented by experts in the discussion of the key theoretical paper was too much for the lone

…

have worried more about the kite than the strings of the “different species in a genus of suspension bridges” that had been evolving toward the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the wake of Moisseiff and Lienhard’s theory. For all the expertise that was assembled against him and to which he felt obligated to

…

1:53.8—still very narrow, but a less radical departure from experience. Had Condron’s recommendation been followed, it is very possible that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge would have been stiffened enough that, even had it exhibited some degree of flexibility in the wind, that might have been within tolerable limits and

…

of the Golden Gate Bridge at the time the Tacoma Narrows was being designed. In any event, Condron’s warning about the width of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was not heeded, and the report of the consulting engineers prevailed: It might seem to those who are not experienced in suspension bridge design that

…

of a like amount from Pierce County. Construction bids were received by October 1938, and the bridge was completed less than two years later. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge executing its fatal oscillations in November 1940 (photo credit 5.22) Even before the bridge was completed, however, engineers were surprised by its large movements

…

a replacement bridge could be built—with very deep trusswork providing not a terribly slender profile but a very stiff deck. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge revealed a classic case of hubris, for the success of bridges like the George Washington and its close antecedents and descendants had given the coterie

…

in the recent Miami hurricane, but the whole series seems largely to have been ignored by the bridge builders. Only after the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge were Pagon’s articles described as “must reading.” Such a turnabout was prompted in no small measure by a letter that appeared in Engineering News

…

was in the process of establishing a model supersonic wind tunnel at Caltech when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed. Von Kármán was one of three engineers appointed by the Federal Works Agency to investigate the failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. He was joined by Glenn B. Woodruff, the consulting engineer from San Francisco who had

…

the Quebec cantilever bridge at the beginning of his career. The committee’s report, issued less than five months after the collapse, concluded that “the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was well designed and built to resist safely all static forces, including wind, usually considered in the design of similar structures.” In other words, the

…

forces which had proven disastrous in the past to much lighter and shorter flexible suspension bridges would affect a structure of such magnitude as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.” That the report read as it did should perhaps not have been surprising, given the composition of the board of engineers, but their relationship and

…

opened with a broad, inclusive historical survey of the dynamic behavior of suspension bridges. Farquharson began this survey by noting that the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge “came as such a shock to the engineering profession that it is surprising to most to learn that failure under the action of wind was

…

bridge engineer … was remiss in not anticipating” what had happened. He argued that it was “unbelievable” that the eight-thousand-ton center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge could be lifted by the wind as easily as the 460-ton deck of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, which had been destroyed in 1854, or

…

of the late engineer, even dared address the matter. “The one great disappointment in Mr. Moisseiff’s career,” Ammann wrote, “was the failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the design of which he had originated and guided.” Yet, Ammann continued, “it would be improper for his fellow professionals to put the blame for

…

a variety of experience with the unique and specialized design and construction problems that were faced. Sometimes, of course, as in the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the greatness of the engineers has come to seem more important than the design itself. In any event, who would consult on what bridge had

…

, if that was indeed to be the metaphor for progress, since 1931? The light suspension bridges with sleek girder-stiffened decks that culminated in the Tacoma Narrows Bridge were not suitable candidates, for obvious reasons, but it could also be argued that the George Washington itself made engineers do what they did to

…

of the towers and the roadway, which proponents believed would check the motion of the roadway directly. Within a month of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which had been fitted with cable stays of yet another kind, Engineering News-Record published separate articles on the alternatives endorsed by Steinman and Ammann

…

resolve the matter, according to Ammann, and all installations called for “constant watching” to be sure they did not slip the way those on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had done. The report of the committee of Ammann, von Kármán, and Woodruff on the collapse of that bridge gave no acknowledgment of the disagreement

…

such idealized systems that many bridge engineers fail to see the analyses as representing real bridges in real winds. Indeed, the problem epitomized by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge continues to stir controversy and debate among theoreticial engineers, practical engineers, and physicists alike. Whatever explanations of that collapse may be claimed or proposed remain

…

critical wind velocity, at which oscillations of the deck could start, from the forty-two miles per hour that had become associated with the failed Tacoma Narrows Bridge to a calculated value of 642 miles per hour. An additional feature—namely, an open-grid roadway under the two center traffic lanes—raised the

…

tireless efforts for passage of registration laws for engineers; or his later “speech-making campaign when he barnstormed the country” explaining the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which he believed he could have saved? It was this last effort especially that did “not endear him to his contemporaries who had a part

…

bridge failures had followed from the middle of the nineteenth century. What Sibly and Walker noted was that the collapses of the Tay, Quebec, and Tacoma Narrows bridges, which occurred in 1879, 1907, and 1940, respectively, were very nearly thirty years apart. A less commonly remembered incident, but one that was equally dramatic

…

when less experienced engineers associated with a project defer to the presumed infallible experience and judgment of a more eminent engineer, as happened with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In the case of Gustav Lindenthal and the succeeding generation embodied in his assistants Ammann and Steinman, the inflexibility of the mentor in failing to

…

bridges primarily as aesthetic models. The limitations of this shortsighted view of engineering history became immediately apparent in the wake of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the subsequent revitalization of the suspension-bridge form took place only in light of newly embraced aerodynamic theories and wind-tunnel testing. This new

…

back of an envelope or an elaborate numerical one in the gigantic memory of a supercomputer, is only as good as its fundamental assumptions. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell because the most sophisticated deflection theory used to design it did not take into account the dynamic effects of the wind. In sum, the

…

bridge that might fulfill the inexorable prophecy of Sibly and Walker’s pattern of failures will not necessarily be the longest of the genre. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge had, after all, only the third longest main suspended span in 1940. But though mere size may not bring bridges down, it may often be

…

, p. 56. 278. Leon Solomon Moisseiff: see “Memoir”; DAB, suppl. 3, pp. 530–31. 279. “Although he did not”: DAB, suppl. 3, p. 531. 280. Tacoma Narrows Bridge: see Ammann et al. 281. traffic over the bridge: ENR, Aug. 1, 1940, p. 139. 282. “Unless there are”: Moisseiff, in Ammann et al., p

…

, May 18, 1963, p. 39. 310. “an eccentric study”: NYT, May 18, 1963, p. 39. 311. The committee’s report: Ammann et al. 312. “the Tacoma Narrows Bridge”: ibid., “Summary of Conclusions,” n.p. 313. bombastic autobiography: von Kármán. 314. “the bridge was built correctly”: ibid., p. 212. 315. “took home from Cal

…

of the American Society of Civil Engineers, CO2: 5–21. Ammann, O. H., Theodore von Kármán, and Glenn B. Woodruff. 1941. The Failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Washington, D.C.: Federal Works Agency. Anderson, Graham, and Ben Roskrow. 1994. The Channel Tunnel Story. London: E. & F. N. Spon. Anderson, Norman D. 1992

…

. 1934. “Art in Bridge Building.” Civil Engineering, December, pp. 627–31. Farquharson, F. B. 1949. Aerodynamic Stability of Suspension Bridges: With Special Reference to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Report, University of Washington, Structural Research Laboratory. Fenves, Steven J. 1989. “A History of Pittsburgh’s Bridges.” Pittsburgh Engineer, May-June, pp. 14–19, 32

…

, Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority) 5.20 Leon Moisseiff (from Engineering News-Record, September 9, 1943) 5.21 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, in July 1940 (from Ammann, von Kármán, and Woodruff) 5.22 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge executing its fatal oscillations in November 1940 (from Ammann, von Kármán, and Woodruff) 5.23 Othmar Ammann at the

…

on their mastery of numbers but on their gifts for self-promotion. It is an account of triumphs and ignominious disasters (including that of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which twisted apart in a high wind). In this engaging book, Petroski lets us see how bridges became the “symbols and souls” of our civilization

Lonely Planet Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest

by Lonely Planet · 1,006pp · 243,928 words

city to the north shore, and is a lookalike to San Francisco’s Golden Gate. Possibly the area’s most infamous bridge was the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka ‘Galloping Gertie’) in Puget Sound, which existed for only four months. It collapsed spectacularly in a windstorm due to structural flaws; its replacement was

Code Complete (Developer Best Practices)

by Steve McConnell · 8 Jun 2004 · 1,758pp · 342,766 words

happen. — David Parnas Paul Clements In my part of the world, a dramatic example of such a wicked problem was the design of the original Tacoma Narrows bridge. At the time the bridge was built, the main consideration in designing a bridge was that it be strong enough to support its planned load

…

. In the case of the Tacoma Narrows bridge, wind created an unexpected, side-to-side harmonic ripple. One blustery day in 1940, the ripple grew uncontrollably until the bridge collapsed, as shown in

…

Figure 5-1. Figure 5-1. The Tacoma Narrows bridge—an example of a wicked problem This is a good example of a wicked problem because, until the bridge collapsed, its engineers didn't know

…

many spectacular bridge failures have occurred because of focusing on previous successes and not adequately considering possible failure modes. He concludes that failures like the Tacoma Narrows bridge could have been avoided if the designers had carefully considered the ways the bridge might fail and not just copied the attributes of other successful

…

I. M. Pei. You'd probably visit some of their buildings. If you were interested in structural engineering, you'd study the Brooklyn Bridge; the Tacoma Narrows Bridge; and a variety of other concrete, steel, and wood structures. You would study examples of successes and failures in your field. Thomas Kuhn points out

…

of, Table-Driven Methods stair-step access tables, Indexed Access Tables storage issue, Two Issues in Using Table-Driven Methods transforming keys, Fudging Lookup Keys Tacoma Narrows bridge, Design in Construction takedown code, refactoring, Reasons to Refactor Team Software Process (TSP), How Many Errors Should You Expect to Find? teams, Example of Programming

The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

by Gay Talese and Bruce Davidson · 1 Jan 2003 · 134pp · 39,353 words

—the BMT tunnel at Sixtieth Street under the East River, built at an additional cost of $4,000,000. In November of 1940, when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell into the waters of Puget Sound in the state of Washington, O. H. Ammann was again one of the engineers called in to help

…

through. And it was partially because of these solid girders that, on days when the wind beat hard against its solid mass of roadway, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge kicked up and down. But it never kicked too much, and the motorists, far from becoming alarmed, actually loved it, enjoyed riding over it. They

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

by Ken Jennings · 19 Sep 2011 · 367pp · 99,765 words

now there’s only a waste-land of pawnshops and adult video stores. The last stop on our itinerary is another historic spot: the famed Tacoma Narrows Bridge, recently twinned with a new span heading west to the Kitsap Peninsula. The original bridge across this strait was the famous “Galloping Gertie,” which collapsed

…

unpopular and spooky, 63 swastikas, visible from space, 220 Sweden, plotting for world domination by, 136 Sylvie and Bruno (Carroll), 212–13 Taal, Lake, 2 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 172 Tadataka, Ino, 62 Tallis, John, 97, 104 Tamir, Yuli, 64 Tannen, Deborah, 139 taxi drivers, 17, 236 Teague, Mike, 188–89 Terra Australis, 68

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors

by Matt Parker · 7 Mar 2019

and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher welcomes notification of any additions or corrections for any future reprints. 1: ‘The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse’ © Barney Elliott 2: ‘Sydney Harbour Bridge’ by Sam Hood © Alamy ref. DY0HH0 3: Torus ball © Tim Waskett 4: ‘Manchester gears, 3D’ © Sabetta Matsumoto 5

…

reinforcement of future bridges was enough to drive torsional instability back into hiding. For a while. Torsional instability came back with a vengeance in the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Washington State, US). Designed in the 1930s, it was part of the new art deco visual aesthetic; the main designer, Leon Moisseiff, said that bridge

…

shop, where the owner, Barney Elliott, had new-fangled 16-millimetre Kodachrome colour film. Elliott and his colleague managed to capture the bridge’s demise. Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 1940. Moments later, a guy jumped out of that car and ran for his life. But the notoriety of this bridge’s collapse has come

…

with a down side: the wrong explanation. To this day, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster is held up as an example of the dangers of resonant frequencies. Like the Millennium Bridge, it is argued that the wind travelling down

…

with torsional instability. The sleekness of the design made it very aerodynamic. As in, the air made it dynamic. Whereas other proposed designs for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had a metal mesh which wind could blow through, the bridge that was built had flat metal sides, perfect for catching the wind. The actual

…

the oscillations would increase. If you blow hard enough over a taut ribbon, you can see this effect for yourself. In the wake of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster, similar bridges were reinforced. Aerodynamic flutter was added to the long list of things an engineer had to worry about when designing a bridge

…

excitation: 276.38806–277.38806, 280.62687 T shirt: 5.00000–5.02985, 313.41791–313.62687 tabulating machines: 73.74627, 75.08955–76.65672 Tacoma Narrows Bridge: 268.47761–270.29851 tallest mountain: 115.11940–116.89552 tax return: 36.71642–36.80597, 38.61194, 41.05970–42.92537 Therac machine: 13

Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives

by Stefan Al · 11 Apr 2022 · 300pp · 81,293 words

structures with thicker members than necessary, because they could not fully test their creations until they were built. Perhaps the most famous disaster was the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington. Upon completion in 1940, it was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world. To save money, engineers specified a structure with shallow

…

,” inducing greater and greater twists, and snapping the cables. Much of our understanding of modern engineering stems from past failures. The collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge eventually led to mandatory wind-tunnel testing. Typically, sensors attached to a model take hundreds of readings of the wind pressure, and a computer analyzes

…

3,500-foot-long deck only 12 feet deep. Its slenderness ratio of 1:292 became a goal for other bridges.43 In 1950, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge broke this record, with a roadway 2,800 long and only 8 feet deep, at a 1:350 slenderness ratio. However, at this extreme slenderness

…

need for a bit of, 63 of super slenders, 179, 196, 206 techniques for reduction of, 74–75 tolerable maximum, 73 Switzerland, 146, 177–78 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, 69–70, 207 Taipei 101, 35, 40, 67, 72, 74, 76, 107 Tati, Jacques, 171 technological progress, 11–12, 13 in concrete alternatives, 44–45

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin, Ph.d. · 11 Oct 2022

equipment, or a complex combination of risks. In the 1970s, when I was a graduate student, engineering classes famously used the case of the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge accident to illustrate design error, or how just one detail can upend function. The suspension bridge was nicknamed Galloping Gertie because when the wind blew

…

his owner and abandon a car stuck on the collapsing bridge). The design of the Golden Gate Bridge is far superior to that of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but an entirely different kind of disaster was averted in 1987, when the Golden Gate celebrated its golden anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, San Francisco

…

Expertise in Radiology—Current Knowledge and a New Perspective.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2019). doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00213. Washington State Department of Transportation. “Tacoma Narrows Bridge History—Lessons from the Failure of a Great Machine.” https://wsdot.wa.gov/tnbhistory/bridges-failure.htm. “ ‘Weak Engineering Management’ Probable Cause of Columbia Gas

…

, 46 Swaminathan, Nikhil, 207 Sweden, 169, 176, 231 Swift cattle plant, 114, 149 Swiss apprenticeship model, 112–14, 117 Syntactic Structures (Chomsky), 1–2 T Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Washington state), 207–8 talking to oneself, 10, 13–14. See also self-talk TaskRabbit, 17 teams diverse thinkers on, 6–7, 128–30, 142

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough · 1 Jun 2001 · 848pp · 240,351 words

Bridge inauguration Cleveland Rolling Mill Clifton Bridge (England) Clinton (ferry) Coal mine accidents Cochrane, Admiral Lord Thomas Collapsed bridges, casualties from Ashtabula bridge Quebec bridge Tacoma Narrows Bridge Tay Bridge Wheeling Bridge Collingwood, Francis, Jr Brooklyn caisson and Brooklyn tower accident and footbridge work and New York caisson and New York tower and

…

(Brains) and breakup of Tweed Ring flees the country Rink Committee investigation and bridge stock and at marriage of Tweed’s daughter Swertcope, John Valentine Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Wash.) Talmage, T. DeWitt Tay Bridge (Scotland) Telford, Thomas Tennessee (ship) Terminals Thurber, H. K. Tilden, Samuel Tilton, Elizabeth scandal involving Tilton, Theodore Timbs, Patrick

…

on the bridge as it was when completed in 1883. * The most famous latter-day example of this same phenomenon was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, over Puget Sound, in the state of Washington. On November 7, 1940, in a high wind, “Galloping Gertie,” as the bridge became known, began heaving