Quote:
Originally Posted by Soundy
(Post 8111732)
You left out one major factor: hindsight is 20/20.
There are dozens if not hundreds of bridges of this basic design (tower/cable stayed) in the world, some (many?) of them with cables over the roadway, most without. Some are in warmer climates, some colder; some will experience snow and ice, some won't. Most have been in operation for years if not decades.
In all that, with a collective dozens if not hundreds of winters behind the design, it's apparent that a situation like this, to this severity, has not happened before - if it had, the design would have been modified to mitigate the risks, a long time ago.
So here you have a very particular combination of design and weather events that have conspired to create a very specific set conditions, quite possibly for the first time *ever*... so they were supposed to have planned for this based on, what... experience?
It's easy for all the armchair engineers to look at it now and say, "duh, why didn't they think of that?".
|
Now hold on a minute, I don't want to start an argument, this will be my last post on the subject.
But step back and read what I wrote, then what you wrote for a second.
The very first thing I wrote in my post was that there would be a lot of data to consider before any decisions would be made. My post was meant to illustrate a general point of the variables and factors that would be placed into consideration. I didn't even make a claim to whether or not I believed this bridge's design is flawed.
In your post, if we read in between the lines, you're making a claim in defense of the bridge's design by saying in laymen's speak "there's a lot of these bridges in similar climates all over the world, there must be enough of these bridges to build up enough confidence to make an assumption that this design is not flawed, and we can not expect it to happen again in the future".
I think between you and I the only armchair engineer is yourself. I work closely with engineers, their spec, and design, and in my post I've simply shared an opinion into the extent of the analysis they would conduct for a problem like this, I've made no claims whatsoever. On the other hand you've made a claim that the bridge must be safe because there's probably lots of similar bridges built in similar environments all over the world (I'd definitely love to see this data, I would paypal you some extra cash to buy yourself something decent for the holidays. Show me the data and I'll show you the money)
You make a terrible armchair engineer by the way. Everything from the angle of the cables, the air pressure, humidity, seismic vibrations, etc,
all of these variables cannot be exactly the same somewhere else in the world. That is absolute bullshit. And any combination of these variables could correlate to a greater chance of the ice forming. If they happen often enough, the bridge has a major design flaw. If it's just this one time, then it was bad luck that it had to happen right when the bridge opened up. But if you took the time to read and comprehend my fairly written post, you would see the only person acting as a failed armchair engineer between us is you.
