Wentworth Institute of Technology, Massachusetts
April 22, 2022
April 22, 2022
April 23, 2022
11
10.18260/1-2--42206
https://peer.asee.org/42206
291
Brian graduated from East Chapel Hill High School in 2018 as one of the valedictorians. He is a Civil Engineering Major at the US Coast Guard Academy in the class of 2022. He has had the opportunity to serve as a Platoon Commander and Master at Arms and received the Ross Oar Award for leadership on the Crew Team in 2020. He is currently working to provide resilient solutions to flooding for Coast Guard Station Niagara as a Capstone project. Next year, he will attend Flight School in Pensacola, FL.
Luke Monaco is from Ramsey, NJ and graduated from Ramsey High School in June of 2018. Luke is majoring in civil engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and he a member of the class of 2022. While at the Academy, he has served in company leadership roles as both Executive Officer and Master-at-Arms. Luke is also captain and founder of the Academy's Alpine Ski Team; in this role, he has earned the McBrine Divison's 2020 Captain of the Year Award and the 2022 Sara Grayson Memorial Award for outstanding leadership and service in the division. He is currently working on the redevelopment of Coast Guard STA Castle Hill's septic system as part of a senior capstone project. In June, Luke will report to USCGC HEALY in Seattle, WA to serve as a Deck Watch Officer on America's largest icebreaker. He has previously had summer training assignments at several Coast Guard units, including Barque EAGLE, USCGC TYBEE, and USCG STA Golden Gate.
Dr. Mazurek joined the faculty of the Civil Engineering section in 1990. He was previously employed by General Dynamics’ Electric Boat Division, where he provided submarine construction support and conducted engineering design and analysis associated with pressure hulls and other structures. He also conducted research in the area of structural noise and vibration transmission reduction in submarines. Just prior to joining the Academy faculty, he taught for one year at Lafayette College in the Department of Civil Engineering.
Dr. Mazurek’s current research interests lie in the area preserving and interpreting the history of railroad structures, working closely with the Ontario and Western Railway Historical Society. He has also collaborated with the Federal Railroad Administration to study improved methods for in situ stress measurements of steel railroad bridges. Prior to his work in railroad engineering, he conducted research pertaining to vibration-based methods for detecting damage in structures such as highway bridges, ships, and towers. He has been involved in structural forensics, having investigated the collapses of several Coast Guard navigation and communication towers. He has also been engaged in risk assessment and building security issues, including developing the course Structural Design for Extreme Events, with blast-resistant design as a main emphasis. He has actively served on the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association’s Committee for Steel Structures since 1991, and is past chair of its Subcommittee on Coatings and Special Construction.
A three-span pin-connected through-truss bridge over the East Branch of the Delaware River near Fish’s Eddy, NY, was erected in 1882 for the New York, Ontario & Western Railway. Designed by the Central Bridge Works of Buffalo, NY, the structure experienced two collapse events during its rather short fifteen-year life. The first occurred in 1886 when a caboose, derailed by a broken rail, struck the end post of the northernmost span, dropping it into the river and killing the four crewmen riding inside the car. The bridge was rebuilt and continued in service until 1897, when the middle span collapsed while a train of empty coal cars traversed the structure. Since the span was lightly loaded by the empty cars of a train on orders to proceed no faster than five mph, officials were quite surprised by the failure, and were never able to establish a definitive cause. A recent detailed evaluation of the first panel hangers demonstrated that they were especially vulnerable to both routine overstress as well as fatigue under simulated traffic, and that the failure of such a hanger could indeed have been responsible for the 1897 collapse. The authors are currently conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the remaining primary members of the truss to assess whether they also possessed vulnerabilities of a degree similar to the first panel hangers. This study utilizes both the railroad’s original 1881 specification for iron bridges as well as the modern-day provisions stipulated by the American Railway and Maintenance-of-Way Association’s recommended practices. With regard to loading, this includes the requirements for dead and live load, and where appropriate, impact and rocking effect. Employing the allowable stress criteria given by these design rules, a comparative analysis among the members of the truss will be completed based on the Cooper load capacity of each member. In addition, member stresses resulting from simulated loads based on the actual traffic that the bridge might have been subjected to while in service will be considered. By comparing Cooper capacity to actual equivalent load levels, assessments will be made regarding whether each member would have been overloaded, and if so, to what degree. The paper will examine the history and various details associated with the bridge, including a review of the relevant portions of the railroad’s specification for iron bridges governing the design of the primary structure, as well as important observations gleaned from the 1897 collapse. Methods of structural analysis, development of simulated trains and their loads, and the results of the comparative member assessment will be presented. Finally, conclusions will be made regarding the likelihood of an alternative failure mechanism relative to that previously demonstrated for the first panel hangers. This work will contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the history of bridges, and will provide insight for structures of this type and vintage that continue in service today.
Golliher, B. M., & Monaco, L. H., & Mazurek, D. (2022, April), Structural Evaluation of the Ontario & Western Railway’s Original Bridge at Fish’s Eddy Paper presented at ASEE-NE 2022, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--42206
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