Lessons learned in the design and erection of box girder bridges from the West Gate collapse

The West Gate Bridge, intended to span the Yarra River in Australia, collapsed during its third year of construction in 1970. Investigation into the project revealed numerous issues in the bridge's design and construction. The West Gate Bridge is one of a number of box girder bridges built during the mid 20th century, and was one of four to fail in a three year period. An overview of the design and erection issues is presented, particularly those dealing with thin elements in compression. A comparison of moments and stresses resulting from the use of concrete blocks and jacks to reduce the camber difference encountered on span 10-11 shows that the latter method would have been preferable. The failure of three other box girder bridges between 1969 and 1971, and the required strengthening of dozens of others, reveal the lack of understanding of the slender compressive elements present in such structures. A brief literature review presents the buckling and deformation modes found in stiffened plates under compressive loading, showing the development of understanding of these systems from papers written or published in 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2006 - over three decades after the West Gate collapse.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Burton, Alia Christine

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jerome J. Connor.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38943

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38943