Bridges aren’t ready for today’s huge ships
by Emma Roth from The Verge - All Posts on (#6KQBN)
Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images For years now, civil engineers have understood that bridges have a problem: many of them are not designed to withstand a blow from the kinds of cargo ships that routinely pass through their waters. Those concerns came to a head on Tuesday with the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. It's the kind of failure engineers have been trying to prevent for decades - and even now, they're not sure if the available solutions are enough.
We don't design for the deadly force that is generated by such an impact - millions of pounds," Atorod Azizinamini, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Florida International University, tells The Verge. The collapse has really nothing to do with the type...