Reply #94: IMHO a poor design [View All]

[FogerRox]

.having a roadway wider than the truss is definitely a problem as it violates the basic strength of the truss design, IMHO makes for a weaker design... Think of it in the context of load transfer..... seems very ineffective to me. IMHO one would have to have the road deck be supported by a separate truss system prependicular to the main trusses to properly transfer load from the edge of the 8 lane road deck/trusses to the main trusses. As built this design does not include this road deck truss, thusly cannot transfer load effectively to the main truss.

The twisting stresses were not accounted for in the design. Coupled with the lack of proper load transfer from the road deck to the main truss, along with poor welds during construction and poor maintence..

...well, there is a multi faceted set of problems that led to failure.