Catalog Search Results
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1978, a developer chose to build a hotel in Kansas City using a management technique called fast-tracking, in which construction begins before the design is complete. What can happen when each principal assumes that someone else has designed a critical structural connection? Explore the series of mistakes that led to the tragic collapse of two suspended walkways and the deaths of 114 people.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
One of the most epic engineering failures in history was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. Nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," the bridge undulated so strongly that thrill-seekers came from all over just to drive across it. Explore the inherent structural inefficiency of the suspension bridge, and why this bridge failed spectacularly only four months after its opening.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh's bomb demolished almost half of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Explore details of the building's design and specific ways in which various structural elements responded to the blast. Is it possible that modest changes to the steel reinforcement might have allowed the building to survive with only localized damage?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
What would the Tower of Pisa be if it weren't leaning? Certainly not as attractive to tourists. That was the issue faced by the late-20th-century engineers who devised a way to reduce the tower's angle of tilt. Take a journey through the centuries to explore how various engineers tried to stabilize the leaning tower, but only succeeded in making the problem worse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
When the Tay Bridge in Scotland was completed in 1878, it became the longest bridge in the world. Discover the behind-the-scenes details of the bridge design and construction, and how the failure of one single, simple connection triggered a chain of events that brought down a 4,000-ton structure.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
It's easy to imagine the technical difficulties that come with drilling an exploratory well miles below a floating platform on the high seas. Explore the step-by-step sequence of failures—flawed design decisions, careless oversights, deliberate procedural shortcuts, and prioritizing profits over safety—that led to the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On June 10, 2000, Londoners celebrated the opening of a state-of-the-art pedestrian bridge over the Thames River. Two days later, the Millennium Bridge was vibrating so intensely that it was closed and did not reopen for more than two years. Explore the phenomenon of synchronous lateral excitation and learn how engineers fixed "The Wobbly Bridge" and prevented similar failures in other bridges.
8) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 17,Stress Corrosion: The Silver Bridge
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1967, the Silver Bridge in West Virginia collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people. For 39 years, the bridge had been hailed as an engineering triumph with its cost-saving, innovative structural concept. Follow this fascinating story of forensic engineering as investigators eventually determined that the 1,965-foot bridge failed because one eyebar in a suspension chain fractured.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Unlike most structural catastrophes, the 1986 Challenger disaster occurred on live TV. Explore behind the scenes to learn about what led to this catastrophic result. It will become clear that this disaster—which killed seven people and threw the entire US space program into crisis—was as much a failure of organizational decision-making as it was an engineering failure.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Handing lucrative contracts to family members rarely has it led to such a public catastrophe as the 1876 Ashtabula Bridge disaster. As you learn the fascinating history of entrepreneur Amasa Stone—who built an iron bridge using a structural concept specifically developed for wood—you'll follow the mistakes that led to America's worst rail accident and worst bridge failure up to that time.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Some engineering failures occur when the construction process goes badly awry. Explore two such cases: one in which five people died trying to implement an ad hoc solution to an unexpected construction challenge and one in which a building collapse was caused by a flawed technology that was intended solely to improve construction efficiency.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In December 1915, United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA) built—without any formal engineering design—a massive cylindrical steel tank along Boston's North End waterfront to store incoming shipments of molasses. When the tank ruptured three years later, 21 people died. Explore the phenomena of metal fatigue and brittle fracture and learn what role they played in the Great Boston Molasses Flood.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Go behind the scenes to discover what really happened in more than 24 epic engineering failures. Civil engineer and award-winning educator Stephen Ressler reveals the story behind each disaster by not only demonstrating the scientific and engineering issues involved, but also by examining the individual personalities and sometimes dysfunctional organizations that led to catastrophe.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In 1976, the American Institute of Architects presented an Honor Award to Helmut Jahn for his innovative design of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Three years later, a 43,000-square-foot section of the roof collapsed. Follow the forensic engineers as they painstakingly analyze the arena's innovative design and identify four major factors that contributed to the roof's collapse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
You know that if you don't maintain your car, it can stop working. But we have often overlooked that lesson when it comes to bridges. Follow the fascinating case of the Mianus River Bridge and discover how lack of maintenance caused its collapse in 1983, although the bridge had just been inspected. What happened to those pin-and-hanger connections? And exactly, whose fault was it?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
While the Loma Prieta earthquake caused many fires, landslides, and structural failures, two thirds of the fatalities were caused by the collapse of the Cypress Structure, a two-level elevated highway. Explore the complex effects of earthquakes on structures and learn the role resonance and sediment-induced amplification played in this catastrophe.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
No engineering failure in history had more world-changing consequences than the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the former Soviet Union. Discover the numerous design, personnel, and bureaucratic flaws that resulted in the explosion of Reactor 4 during a routine safety test—releasing 800 times more radioactive material than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
18) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 6,Vehicle Collisions: Land and Sea
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
When an unexpected squall limited visibility to near zero, the Summit Venture freighter collided with Tampa's Sunshine Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980, shearing off a reinforced concrete pier and toppling 1,300 feet of the bridge into the bay. Was this an engineering failure? Or was it just an accident? Discover how high-quality engineering design can account for and minimize accidental catastrophe.
19) Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach: Episode 12,Stone Masonry: Beauvais Cathedral
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
On November 29, 1284, much of the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre at Beauvais collapsed without warning. Had this Gothic church simply exceeded the inherent maximum height of a stone structural system, as some historians have suggested? Watch fascinating demonstrations that both explain the function of the medieval flying buttress and point to the design flaws that most likely caused the collapse.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Boston's John Hancock Tower was still under construction when winds of 75 miles per hour struck on January 20, 1973. By morning, 65 exterior glass panels lay shattered on the ground. Around that time, construction workers reported severe swaying of the structure during winds. Discover how tuned-mass damper technology became an effective tool for controlling wind- and earthquake-induced sway.
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