ENGINEERING

FAILURES
COs Statements

CO 1 Students will be able to understand the professional ethics and frameworks

CO 2 Students will be able to explore the professional responsibilities and the impact of their decisions on the projects and societies

CO 3 Students will be able to investigate uncertanities in the design and access the risk and safety requirements

CO 4 Student will be able to justify the role of academic and research Integrity in sustainable development

CO 5 Students will be able to mitigate civil engineering failures

 Introduction
 The field of engineering has contributed immensely towards
changing the way the world works.
 In many ways, the innovations and inventions over the last few
decades have been nothing short of incredible.
 However, there have also been some tragic and
unforgettable engineering catastrophes.
 These disasters have generally resulted from a mixture of design
failures, under or overestimations, acting on insufficient
knowledge, and other factors.
 Nevertheless, these disasters are also an opportunity to learn from
our mistakes so as to not repeat them in the future.
 The Hindenburg Disaster –
a catastrophe that put a halt to the era of
passenger airships
The Hindenburg was a German passenger airship that caught on
fire and was destroyed during an attempt to dock with its
mooring mast, in Manchester Township, New Jersey, in 1937.
There were 35 fatalities from the 97 passengers and crew on
board at the time, and one fatality on the ground.
Although it was the fourth-worst airship accident, in terms of
the number of fatalities, it received a lot of press attention as it
was the subject of numerous newsreel coverages, photographs,
and recorded radio eyewitness reports.
According to American and German investigators who
investigated the crash, the fire broke out due to
electrostatic discharge, which led to the ignition of leaking
hydrogen gas.
 The collapse of the Quebec Bridge –
an engineering failure made twice
The Quebec Bridge, in Canada, actually collapsed twice. The first
time was in 1907, and the second time happened in 1916.
At the time, this was the largest cantilever structure attempted.
When the bridge suddenly collapsed during its construction in
August of 1907, 75 of the 86 workers on the structure were killed,
and the remaining 11 were injured when, in just 15 seconds, the
south anchor arm, the cantilever arm, and the partially completed
suspended span fell 150 feet (45 mt) into the St. Lawrence River.
The Canadian government decided the project must be
completed to establish the rail link for the railway system.
In 1913, construction began again.
By September 1916, the bridge was nearly completed, except for
the work of hoisting the center span and connecting it to the
cantilever arms.
During this process, the span tore away from its lifts and fell into
the river, carrying 13 men on it to their demise, and injuring
several others.
Around one year later, the bridge was finally finished and opened
5
to traffic.
 Titanic – The sinking of the "unsinkable" ship
Titanic is one of the most well-known engineering disasters of all
time. The passenger liner was on its first transatlantic voyage, from
Southampton to New York in April of 1912, when it fatefully collided
with an iceberg and sank.
The ship had been touted an "unsinkable" because it was designed so
that it could stay afloat if as many as 4 of its 16 compartments were
breached.
However, the impact had likely breached at least five compartments.
It was also determined that the compartments were not entirely
watertight.
Later examination of the wreckage found that the collision had
produced a number of thin gashes, along with brittle fracturing and
separation of seams in the hull plates. This allowed water to rapidly
flood a number of the ships' compartments.
There was also speculation that low-quality steel or weak rivets may
have contributed to the sinking.
Although the exact number of people on board is not known, it is
believed that out of approximately 2,200 passengers and crew, around
1,500 people died when the ship sank.
 The nuclear plant explosion in Chernobyl – the engineering
catastrophe that rocked the world
 In 1986, during a test of safety systems on the
number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear
plant, the reactor core ruptured in a
destructive steam explosion.
 This was followed by an open-air reactor core
fire that released huge amounts of radioactive
contaminants into the air for nine days before
the fire was finally contained.
 The fire and cleanup operation killed hundreds
of people, and many millions more in the
former Soviet Union and in parts of Europe may
have suffered from the effects of radiation
exposure. Some reports put the number of
excess cancer deaths due to the accident at
between 30,000 and 60,000.
 The collapse of Charles De Gaulle Airport terminal

 The Charles de Gaulle airport was inaugurated in

May 2004, and soon after, a huge portion of the roof
of Terminal 2E collapsed. The shocking event killed
four people and caused severe injuries to three
more.
 The 1475 ft (450 mt) long terminal building is an
elliptical tube constructed of concrete rings. The
official investigation report found that the structure
had failed due to a lack of detailed feasibility
analysis, a number of design flaws were not caught
during construction. These included a lack of
redundant supports; poorly placed reinforcing steel;
weak outer steel struts; weak concrete support
beams; and low resistance to temperature
fluctuations.
 The structure was rebuilt with a metal framework
and reopened in the spring of 2008.
 The disaster of St. Francis Dam – engineering fail of epic
proportions

 St. Francis Dam was a curved concrete gravity dam, built

between 1924 and 1926 in order to help meet Los Angeles'
growing need for water regulation and storage. In order to
build the dam, an American-Irish civil engineer, William
Mulholland was hired.
 It was located about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of downtown
Los Angeles. The dam was designed and built by the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power (called the Bureau of
Water Works and Supply at that time), under the direction of
its general manager and chief engineer, William Mulholland.
 On March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the
resulting flood killed at least 431 people. The disaster was
largely blamed on poor design and the use of poor quality
concrete, which allowed water to undermine the dam's
foundations. The disaster marked the end of Mulholland's
career.
 The collapse of The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington was a
suspension bridge built to an area of the Puget Sound
between Tacoma and the Kitsap Penninsula.
 Construction began in 1938, and from the time the
deck was built, it began to move vertically in windy
conditions, so much so that construction workers
nicknamed the bridge Galloping Gertie. After the
bridge opened to the public, damping measures were
put in place, but the bridge continued to oscillate.
 On the morning of November 7, 1940, the bridge's
main span finally collapsed in 40-mile-per-hour
(64 km/h) winds. The deck oscillated in an
alternating twisting motion that gradually increased
in amplitude until the deck tore apart.
 Fortunately, there were few people on the bridge at
the time, and the only fatality was a dog.
 The explosion of the SS Sultana – when
negligence leads to disaster
 In the early hours of April 27th, 1865, just days after
the end of the Civil War, the Sultana steamboat burst
into flames along the Mississippi River, killing an
estimated 1,800 passengers and crew.
 The ship was built in Cincinnati in 1863, and regularly
transported passengers and freight between St. Louis
and New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Although
designed to hold 376, that day there more than 2,000
Union troops on board.
 The severe overcrowding and faster river current
caused by the spring thaw put increased pressure on
the ship's boilers, which had been newly repaired.
Shortly after leaving Memphis, the overstrained boilers
exploded, blowing apart the center of the boat and
starting an uncontrollable fire.
 The disaster of the Space Shuttle Challenger –
when a structural failure leads to a tragic loss
 The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disaster took
place on January 28, 1986, when the shuttle
broke apart precisely 73 seconds into flight. The
disaster killed all 7 astronauts who were on
board.
 The entire event was shown live on television.
 After the investigation, it was found that the
space shuttle’s external fuel tank had exploded
after the right solid rocket booster came loose
and ruptured the tank.
 The Air France Concorde flight crash – the downing of
a mighty airliner
 On July 25, 2000, the flight of Air France flight 4590, a
Concorde supersonic airplane, crashed in Gonesse, a suburb of
Paris almost immediately after takeoff, killing all 109 people on board
and four people on the ground. It was the first fatal crash of a
Concorde in 24 years of regular passenger service.
 The disaster occurred because one of its tires blew out during take-off
after it ran over a strip of metal debris that was lying on the runway. A
large fragment of rubber struck a fuel tank on the underside of the
wing, which likely caused the full tank to rupture. The leaking fuel
quickly ignited, probably from an electrical arc in the landing gear
wiring, and the fire caused the engines to fail.
 The strip of metal on the runway had come from an engine part that
had fallen from a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had taken off just
ahead of the Concorde. The part had recently been replaced in
routine maintenance with a non-standard component. Other possible
contributory factors may also have included that the Concorde
exceeded its recommended takeoff weight, and it was missing a
“spacer” in the landing gear mechanism.
 Three years later, Concorde had stopped flying.
 The Atlantic telegraph cable failure
 When compared to some of the other disasters in this list, the
failure of the first transatlantic telegraph cable can be
considered as merely an engineering inconvenience.
 The laying of the cable was complex and suffered from a
number of mishaps, with numerous cable breaks and repairs.
It was finally completed and began operation in August 1858;
but within a few weeks, the cable had failed. The cause of
the failure was thought at the time to be due to it being
driven at too high a voltage from the American end, which
compromised its insulation.
 Later analysis of a length of cable that had been retrieved
from the original deployment placed the blame on the cable's
poor quality, and the fact that the copper core was very close
to the metal sheathing in places.
 After the cost of the laying, and the heavy fanfare of its
opening, the disappointment was so great that it took six
years for the project to be revived, and a new cable made.
 The Gretna Green Rail disaster – when carelessness claims lives

 May 1915 saw one of the worst rail disasters in British

history. This tragedy killed more than 226 people, but a
definitive list of victims was never established.
 The multi-train crash occurred on May 26, outside the
Quintinshill signal box near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire,
Scotland.
 The first collision occurred when a southbound troop train
traveling from Larbert to Liverpool collided with a
stationary local train. One minute later, the wreckage was
itself struck by a northbound sleeper express train traveling
from London to Glasgow. Gas from the lighting system used
on the old wooden carriages of the troop train ignited,
starting a fire which soon engulfed all five trains.
 After an investigation, it was found that the reason behind
the disaster, as expected, was human error, when signalmen
ignored the rules.
 The gas explosion in Cleveland, Ohio – poisonous gases claiming innocent lives

 On 20th October 1944, a gas explosion took place in

Cleveland, Ohio. It occurred following a leak in a
storage tank containing Liquified Natural Gas.
 During that time, it was quite common to keep such
storage tanks above ground, and that was precisely the
case here. What happened next was a series of
explosions and fires that claimed the lives of 130
people.
 It happened when the liquefied gas leaked and became
combustible when mixed with air, and exploded. The
vaporizing gas also flowed along the curbs, entering the
underground sewers, and causing a series of secondary
explosions as it mixed with sewer gases.
 Around 130 people were killed in the fires and
explosions, and many more were left homeless. But the
fire and subsequent investigation led to the
development of new and safer methods for the low-
temperature storage of natural gas.
 References

 https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/
 https://www.coursehero.com/study-guides/boundless-management/ethics-an-overview/
#:~:text=regarding%20personal%20conduct.-,Ethics%20are%20the%20set%20of%20
moral%20principles%20that%20guide%20a,in%20terms%20of%20human%20behavio
r
.
 Introduction to Engineering Ethics by Mike W. Martin Roland Schinzinger.