8
votes
Wooden bridge over a river in southern Norway collapsed early Monday – a similar nearby bridge, also made of glued laminated timber, collapsed in 2016
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- Title
- Norway bridge collapses, drivers of 2 vehicles rescued
- Published
- Aug 15 2022
- Word count
- 442 words
So, back in architecture school, glulam was excitedly touted as the material of the future. It was renewable, relatively low-carbon and eco-friendly, highly performant, and looked nice to boot. Forward-thinking Scandinavian firms were designing sleek timber high-rises.
I remember being a little skeptical about glulam. I thought, well, I'm just a lowly undergraduate and surely far smarter engineers have thought about the fundamentals already. But I couldn't help but to be a little unsettled because wood is fundamentally brittle, not ductile, and therefore experiences brittle—i.e. sudden and without warning—failure. That is, snap. Contrast this with steel which is ductile and will show deformation and bending before failure.
That said, I love the look and feel of glulam pedestrian bridges. But I'm emotionally skeptical of glulam vehicular bridges, and I'm always a little uneasy going over one.
There's no reason vehicular bridges can't work once we fully understand the engineering behind it right? While this is unfortunate I don't think technology is at the point to fully understand materials without some level of practical experience.
Sure, but perhaps they shouldn't build such things until they fully understand the engineering. So this should have been overbuilt until we understand how to build it with minimal materials. Anyone can build a bridge that stands, it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.