Carola Bridge: “Tonight we experienced an uncontrolled failure of the structure”

Gerberträger: Due to static determination, it does not announce serious errors

The problem is the so-called Gerber beam. This is a steel beam that rests on various bearings and spans the entire bridge. “This is a structure that we would not build today because it does not provide any redundancy,” he explains. The component is statically determined. In concrete terms, this means that it does not indicate its failure through deformation.

“A statically indeterminate system can shift. You can see this in the photos of the bridge segments on the New Town side,” he says. The component there is now heavily bent. A dangerous situation, but one that heralds serious problems for the bridge before it collapses.

“With today’s designs, we want to ensure that an error in the construction does not have consequences at other points on the bridge,” explains Curbach. If you build a bridge like this, it will first deform before it fails completely. “What we saw tonight, on the other hand, was an uncontrolled failure.”

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