A Study on Structural Failures & Lessons Learnt

Abstract

Structural failure is the loss of the load carrying capacity of the component or member within structure or structure itself. Structural failure initiated when the material is stressed to it’s strength limit which causes the cracks & excessive deformation. Any structure has several components/members like super-structure, sub-structure & foundations. The loads of super structures transfers to the sub-structure & then sub-structures to the foundations. Like a building frame receive the loads from super structure & transfer to the sub-structures & finally to the foundations. Similarly a highway bridge to support the live load due to traffic & dead load of bridge itself & several other loads such as snow loads, wind loads etc. Then when the structure does not able to transmit these loads safely to the foundations then it under go failure which is called the structural failure [1][2].