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Tacoma Narrow Bridge Essay

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The collapse of the Tacoma Narrow Bridge was a disaster back in the 1940 that is still known to many today. Many physicists have attributed the collapse of the bridge to forced resonance of the mechanical oscillator – where the wind has provided a source of periodic frequency that has tallied the natural frequency of the bridge. (Scanlan, 1990) In fact, there were multiple arguments that have led physicists to conclude that the tragedy was a result of resonance. Although this reasoning has existed for the past few decades and was agreed by physicists, many engineers have found out that such argument was mischaracterised. One of the reasons was that the frequency of the bridge (under 42 mph wind) was 1Hz, which was not close to the actual frequency (0.2Hz) observed during the tragedy. The Van Karman Vortex Street would not be able to result in resonant behaviour on the day of the collapse. There are many more arguments that were supported by different physicists and in this paper, these explanations will be highlighted and evaluated.

Some physicists have come up with an argument that attributed such tragedy to …show more content…
(Scanlan,1990) The negative damping, as well as the torsional degree of freedom has led to the torsional flutter in such that as the rotation of the roadway caused changes in the wind force acting on the surface. Furthermore, when the bridge rotated back, the forces pushed the bridge in the opposite direction. (Scanlan, 1990) They claimed that this negative damping effect, and also increase in rotation that lead up to the torsional oscillation, eventually led to the collapse of the bridge. It is further emphasized that forced resonance and self-excitation are fundamentally different

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