United States Department of Transportation
i
Application of Radiographic Testing to Multilayered Gusset Plate Inspection: [techbrief]
-
2012-10-01
[PDF-476.30 KB]
Details:
-
Corporate Creators:
-
Contributors:
-
Corporate Contributors:
-
Subject/TRT Terms:
-
Publication/ Report Number:
-
Resource Type:
-
Geographical Coverage:
-
Corporate Publisher:
-
Abstract:On August 1, 2007, the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The bridge was a three-span (255- by 456- by 255-ft) continuous subdivided Warren deck truss over the Mississippi River. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the collapse and leveraged technical assistance from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). NTSB determined that the cause of the collapse was due to undersized gusset plates at a particular node location on the main truss. In response to the I-35W collapse, FHWA and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials conducted an experimental program to investigate the structural behavior of gusset plates. This research program tested 13 gusset plate connections to failure, meaning they could no longer support external loads. Four of these experimental connections had simulated section loss in the gusset plates to investigate the role of deterioration on the overall behavior of the connection. This offered a unique opportunity to test nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies on real gusset plate connections in a controlled environment with a known level of section loss. The following sections describe the results attained through radiographic testing (RT) of two multilayer gusset plate specimens.
-
Format:
-
Alternate URL:
-
Collection(s):
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
