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The Hernando de Soto Bridge on Interstate 40 was shut down Tuesday for emergency repairs after transportation officials discovered the crack in the bridge during a routine inspection. On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard put a waterway restriction on the Mississippi River below, leaving at least 24 vessels with 346 barges waiting to travel in either direction, according to Lt. Mark Pipkin of Coast Guard Sector Lower Mississippi River.
Attachment 39481
Attachment 39482
Here's a few more photos.
Attachment 39483 Attachment 39485
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Wonder if they can/will realign the beam or just scab some plate over it?
Ralph
I was thinking the same thing. I would guess that the main focus now is if this beam failed in this manner, others may have the same fate in the future. They'll spend more time investigating that they will fixing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralphxyz
Most likely a temporary repair, bridge restrictions and so forth until they can fabricate new beam and plates. I know locally they replaced entire beams just showing some stretch in the bolt / rivet holes. The problem is simply if something happened the patch would get a lot of criticism so we are likely to see everything replaced.
Since that one guy was tied off to the section which needs to move, I figured he would hang below it while his buddy drilled some holes to scab on a plate :smash:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralphxyz
Interesting cracks in the concrete balustrade support (going by the drilled holes there was probably a rail before that's been removed) on the road deck side, related to the failure?
They are likely engineers at this point, possibly surveyors. On a local bridge surveyors worked for weeks figuring out how the shape of the bridge changed and what was the likely cause. At the same time you have engineers involved to make sure no error in construction happened and that the engineering was correct for the bridge design. Most likely specialist in failure analyst is also involved. This is actually going to be a long process as they will need to make sure nothing else is near failure. Beyond that more than just the broken beam will end up getting replaced.
Whatever is going on I hope this thread continues to receive reports and pictures of the whole process of getting this bridge back into operation. I find these sorts of mega repairs to be most interesting.
Interesting, It looks like it was sideways stress that caused the break rather than vertical.
Wonder if the alignment end to end was off and forced together.
Or land slippage?
Here's a couple more photos,
Attachment 39517 Attachment 39518
In the left picture, is that a mark from tape that was on there AFTER the crack moved? If so, that looks quite old.
A twitter person took this photo in July 2019.
Attachment 39562
The bridge was inspected in Aug 2019.
The yellow truck is westbound.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimfols
The right photo looks like it cracked on a weld. It's so straight (the 'crack'), and the edge looks like weld failure of insufficient penetration. Like they tried to weld it from the outside and inside, and hid it all with grinding it off then painting with primer at the fab shop.
It would be interesting if the supplier supplied a welded beam and not a solid beam as speced.
Of course the question is if this beam has a problem what about the other thousand making up the rest of the bridge.
Shows what might happen when you go for the lowest bidder.
All speculations of course.
Ralph
May 17 2021
The Arkansas DOT released this photo from drone footage taken in 2019 of the cracked beam on the Hernando de Soto Bridge in Memphis. The ARDOT leader of the inspection team has been fired for missing the crack during reviews of 2019 and 2020 inspection reports.
Source: Arkansas DOT
Attachment 39571
Is that an inspection walkway on the other side?Quote:
Originally Posted by jimfols
Maybe the inspector should have taken a walk in addition to watching drone footage...
Just sayin,...
The Drone footage shows the obvious crack, the inspector general was fired because he did not even look at the drone footage or take a walk.
Ralph
After jimfols climbed out for those shots, I recall we have a friend who works on the Mississippi [thank you spell check, mine had one too many snake hisses]. She was caught in that river traffic restriction. So I HAD to google up what transpired.
Some kind of drama!
https://www.google.com/search?client...de+soto+bridge
Using GPS data, ArDOT found that the detours in place take an average of 10 times longer than the normal route over the bridge.
“Using GPS data, we can discern that a previous 8-minute drive is now averaging 84 minutes” Newton added.
I was east of St. Louis 2-1/2 weeks ago, right before this. My loop had me return on I-40. The F-150 loaded 100%, but certain I didn't cause it.
But finally have engine powered portable welder.
I was east of St. Louis 2-1/2 weeks ago, right before this. My loop had me return on I-40. The F-150 loaded 100%, but certain I didn't cause it.
But finally have engine powered portable welder. I could've pulled over and stitched up, but had no rods.
JK. It does say something about civil engineering that 1 complete failure didn't cause a catastrophic event. Hats off. Saw this evening that crack was photographed from a kayak in 2019, maybe that shot with the truck.
Here's a video of the planned repair.Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
https://youtu.be/9QprIzj45n4
TDOT prepares a 46 second animation of a fairly monumental repair; in sufficient detail and logical arrangement of sequences to visualize what fixes what.
Youtubers expend 46 minutes building a bench.
In a way the 46 minute youtuber videos are no worse than my using 500 words to explain some of my more simple buildsQuote:
Originally Posted by Toolmaker51
There's a number of 'inspectors' who need to do inspections, not just sign things off, out there. I'm currently dealing with some 1960's University buildings where the cement and mosaic facings have started falling off, estimated weight of the last 4 foot square that came down, thankfully at night, was ~100 Kg. There are at least 6 buildings clad with the same materials one of which is over 150 feet tall, which has already lost parts of the facings. The Universities estates claim to do 'regular' binocular (visual) inspection and 'tap' testing, hard to claim that if as one of the core safety specialists informs me the last one was 6 years ago...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralphxyz
Plus I do not need a face shot of the youtuber whilst narrating the video.Quote:
Originally Posted by Toolmaker51
FINALLY! I get to disagree with Frank S.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank S
Despite entirely different backgrounds and talents, never a sliver of discord. In 5+ years, he's aided progress for a [to me] monumental project; I'm confident of filling-in details to his. We've met in person, including his associates, over course of a day and a half, including a trip west to pick up auction material. Prior to that, en route his home, he tolerated my errant navigation [which I maintain a case of rural hide-and-seek]. All this and more, entirely due HMT.net.
But to equate a droning 46 minute you-tube with 500 word descriptions, is out of line. I doubt many recorders can verbalize so accurately, depending on video as a crutch. The ability to render a technical description is getting lost; not only to convenience, poor technical vocabularies, and general lack of commitment. Example; I'm looking for a pair of jackposts, type with handles to run the nut. Of five sites I use, 3 locals have posts, none with height listed or scalable photo, how elementary is that?
There's not a handful of people generating video content I'd give two cents; however, that same few do terrific jobs.
Run of the mill video is, well, run-of-the-mill; narrow, myopic, uninspiring. Obnoxious background music worsens it; fill indicates a lack somewhere within. When the opening lines are "Hi, I'm Xxx, please like and subscribe..." instant mute. Timeline indicates breaks or interruptions? A big jump from intro to last minute.
As a left-handed comparison, insurance commercials are my current peeve. I see nonsense as camouflage, only thing funny about that product, insistence it's critical to our security. The cable show "How It's Made" is the same, just superfluous airtime interspersed with unrelated commercials. Admittedly, a tiny handful are good, showing enough depth in/ of raw material to product.
Watching never equals observing, and so few projects require duplication... I contend, of the two, one is strategic, one tactical. Watching generates mere copies. Observation breaks down elements into "they did this, but I'll do this way". A less productive group, say, armchair quarterbacks, do that, but never have impact. Should-a, would-a, could-a.
A proper description is the same. The post discloses what is believed most important; you read and re-read to dissect an interpretation. The most benefit is in the gaps; when references are found only with initiative, until sufficient CONFIDENCE has you undertake said project; or incorporate DIFFERENTLY.
Another reason I believe little separation exists between dyed-in-the-wool tradeperson and so-called hobbyist.
Here a guy did a 12:54 video of how this type of bridge works.
When being a maker, I believe it's good to know what keeps bridges up.
Plus a lot of us drive over or under them quite often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8PodEM4Y8g
Standing since 1973 and refuses to collapse!
