The Silver Bridge Collapse

by Eleftherios Charalambous, March2009

1. Introduction

The mismatch between structural and material properties, the functional requirements
imposed by the environment and the inadequate understanding of the system requirements
can lead to significant causes of catastrophic failures. Some of these causes are cracking,
corrosion, creep, melting, wear and excessive deflection. A combination of such causes, in
addition with the tensile residual forces was the reason of the Silver Bridge collapse in 1967.
The whole collapse of the superstructure did not last more than a minute, but it was enough
for forty-six individuals to perish, nine to be injured and the whole structure to disappear.

Plate 1: The Silver Bridge still intact (12)

The Silver Bridge was the first eye-bar suspension bridge of its type to be constructed
in the United States by the American Bridge Company (ABC). It was a suspension bridge in
which some unique engineering techniques were introduced. Eye-bars and rigid hangers were
used to support the deck, rather than steel cables of modern suspension bridges. The bridge’s
eye-bars were linked together in pairs like a chain Figure1 &2. This method had been applied
successfully for 100 years, with the exception that other bridges constructed at much the
same time used several eye-bars for each chain rather than just two eye-bars of higher
strength.

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 Figure 1: Structure of critical eye-bar joint (7)

Figure 2: Section of an eye-bar joint in the Silver Bridge (7)

This safety feature provides that if one of the several eye-bars cracked for any reason,
the remaining bars would keep the bridge together until proper repairs could be made.
Usually the chains’ redundancy was 6-8 times higher. The bridge had been built at a time
when the Model T Ford was the most popular automobile on the roads but by the 1960s cars
were significantly larger and heavier and the road traffic much increased. This resulted to
increase the live load by almost 3 times. (1) This should have been taken in mind for the
adequate design and factors of safety.

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 1.2 Material used

The ABC developed a new heat-treated carbon steel to use on the construction of the
Silver Bridge. This new steel would allow the individual members of the bridge to handle
more stress. This gave the confidence to the designers that the bridge would be safe along
with the two eye-bars sharing the load. But as Professor M Neil James wrote, “A particular
sub-set of failures are those where a design using ‘new technology’ or is at a leading edge of
current engineering knowledge – such components and structures are at a higher risk from
unforeseen interaction/loads than more mundane ones”(3).

The eye-bars had been cast to shape and then heat treated to develop the strength of
the steel; then the eye-holes were drilled out. The newly treated chain steel eye-bars had an
ultimate strength of 105,000 pounds per square inch (psi) with an elastic limit of 75,000psi
along with a maximum working stress of 50,000psi. (2) The toughness of that steel was
0
significantly decreasing at temperatures near freezing point of 0 C Diagram7. (7)

1.3 Testing of Material (prior construction)

It should be mentioned that the testing of the quality of the steel in the eye-bars could
not be performed on actual size specimens because of the absence of large machines. The
testing was performed on special pieces of heat-treated steel manufactured for this purpose.
Steinman, the designer of a similar designed bridge, constructed by the same company, the
Florianopolis Bridge, complained in the engineering literature that ABC kept secret the
material and the process of heat-treatment, and did not permit consulting engineers to have
access to the actual test. As he wrote, “…the engineers declined to assume any responsibility
for the strength and safety of the eye-bars…ABC assumed complete responsibility for that
material”(2).

1.4 Technology and inspection

The technology of the day could not foresee the tragedy that awaited the Silver
Bridge, as the terms “none redundancy”, “corrosion fatigue”, “stress corrosion”, “fracture
critical” and “flaw” were unknown for the engineers’ vocabulary. Therefore, inspections
prior to construction would not have been able to notice the miniature crack. Inspections were
made on 1954, 1955, 1961, and 1965 (1). However, the technology used for inspection at the
time was not capable of detecting such defects. Consequently, the collapse of the bridge
could not have been prevented, because the flaw could not have been detected without
dismantling the joint. The problem lies with using materials that are susceptible to stress
corrosion and corrosion fatigue, and designing structures without redundancy.

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 2. Analysis and Discussion of the results
Eye witnesses certified that the y hard cracking sounds very early in the collapse. This
suggested that brittle fracture was an important failure mode. Even if it wasn’t the first step to
the fall then certainly played a vital role to the collapse.

Therefore the investigation focused on several possible mechanisms that can cause
brittle behaviour in a nominally ductile material such as steel.

 Excessively low temperatures, below the steels’ ductile-to-brittle transition

temperature
 Severe stress concentrations
 Pre-existing cracks
 Stress corrosion cracking (SCC)
 Any of the above combinations

When the parts of the bridge were extracted from the rivers’ bed and reassembled, the
fractured parts were examined in detail to identify the extent of plasticity, exposure of
fracture surfaces and their chemical state.

2.1 Critical component

Several brittle fractures were discovered quickly on critical components of the

structure. One particular broken part was recognised as part of an eye-bar. It was assigned the
identity number 330. The way it had fractured was unique when compared with the other
bars collected. A plate of the fractured eye is shown in Plate3.

Plate 3: The brittle fracture in eye bar 330 (7)

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 The above plate shows two breaks in the limbs either side of the pin-hole. Even if
both appear brittle in the picture, in fact one side shows signs of ductile deformation. The
overall fracture shows very little signs of ductility, except this small shear lip along a short
length of the outer edge of the fracture.

Part of the fracture surface is shown in Plate4.

Plate 4: Close-up of the critical defect in the inner edge of the eye bar (7)

The plate4 shows a close-up of the critical defect in the inner edge of the eye-bar i.e.
the side next to the pin.

The dark, almost black tone probably is iron oxide formed in low concentrations of
oxygen.

Other eye bars examined, were also found to be cracked in similar way at roughly the
same point Plate5. This was a result of the gap between the pin and eye that was exposed to
the environment and tend to fill with rain water. Therefore, rusting tended to occur there. If
there were any pre-existing cracks, crevice corrosion would develop. Logically, red-brown
rust formed first at the upper part of the crack and black oxide where the oxygen was low. i.e.
at the deepest part of the crack.

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 Plate 5: (a) The inner surface showing sub-critical cracks; (b) micrograph of cracks
propagating from the holes’ surface, 8 mm depth (7)

2.2 Tests undertaken (results analysis)

It is clear that the tiny cracks on the inner surface of the eye-bar 330 initiate the
collapse by causing brittle fracture. Therefore, some tests performed in order to determine the
strength of the steel and its fracture toughness.

Hardness test across the section through the eye-bar draw the results shown in
Diagram6. This diagram shows a soft outer zone, followed by a harder zone and then a softer
core. The hardened zone produced by quenching the steel during manufacture. The outer
layer shows loss of carbon due to the heat-treatment during manufacture (7).

Diagram 6: Hardness variation across the eye bar (7)

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 Charpy impact tests at several laboratories showed the toughness of the steel in
different temperatures. Results are presented on diagram shown on Diagram7.

Diagram 7: Charpy impact strength versus temperature (7)

Obviously the toughness significantly falls with lowering temperature near and at
o
freezing point of 0 C .

In addition several tests were performed to investigate the fatigue properties of the
material. No evidence emerged for hydrogen embrittlement and wet environment test that
these could affect the rate of crack propagation. On the other hand, the tests showed that
hydrogen sulphide reduced the life of the steel. This result correlates with the detection of this
substance in the critical crack (7).

Tests on fretting fatigue conclude that even with this effect the material around the
eye showed higher fatigue life than the material in the shank.

A factor that cause serious problem in any material is the presence of residual tensile
stress. This problem is often present as a result of manufacturing, when hot material is shaped
and then allowed to cool in ambient temperatures and it is exposed at the inner edge were the
eye-holes were drilled out. These large stresses are shown in Diagram8 and point the reason
why the crack grew initially.

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Diagram 8: Variation in residual stress across eye bar for the cuts shown below
(7)

Figure 9: Cuts made for residual-stress measurements (7)

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 3. Conclusions
West Virginia’s Silver Bridge disaster in 1967 marked a new era for bridge
inspections and awareness. The bridge collapsed due to a combination of reasons such as:

 unprotected inner bearing surfaces from corrosion

 inadequate inspection of the bridge (due to lack of technology and inaccessibility of
the bearing parts),
 fretting corrosion over a long period of time,
 high level of tensile residual stress in the eye-bar (encourage the growth of the crack)
 sulphur compounds (exacerbate crack growth)

Therefore, Engineers should take in mind that consideration of failure modes and
mechanisms is an integral part of successful design and as Professor M Neil James wrote,
“Appreciation of the causes and ramifications of failure appears to assist in developing an
ability for innovative and elegant design; in other words, facility in assessing the ‘margins’
in a design project”(3).

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 4. Modern Technology
Since the Silver Bridges’ collapse inspections are more routine and in depth. The
Federal Highway Administration, FHWA has had an ongoing interest in the development of
more effective tools for the detection of fatigue cracks in steel bridges. The Non-destructive
Evaluation Validation Centre, NDEVC has focused on developing methods for the
application of electromagnetic crack-detection systems.

Coating-tolerant, Forced-diffusion thermography system and the Ultrasonic

Inspection are systems developed for the detection of defects in steel structures. These
reliable methods and the use of in-built instrumentation and real-time monitoring are giving
the ability to the inspector to “see” through paint with minimal surface preparation, and
obtain a full field representation of critical details with characteristic patterns indicating the
presence of a crack.

In addition testing is an influential task that can lead to more reliable results about the
properties of a structural material and lead to a successive developing and safe structures.

The old saying “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. For that reason
inspections of such superstructures should be regular so as defects on materials such as steel,
that are susceptible to stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue, to be obtained early and
remediation measures to be taken before failures of material can cause tragedies.

With today’s technology, as well as better design technique and materials, Civil
Engineers can feel confident to design and develop safe structures and give to the public the
self-assurance that Silver Bridge disaster will never again take place.

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References:

(1) Chris LeRose, “The Collapse of the Silver Bridge”, West Virginia Historical
Society Quarterly, October 2001, volume XV, No. 4
(2) Abba G. Lichtenstein, “The Silver Bridge Collapse Recounted”, Honorary
Member, ASCE
(3) Professor M Neil James, “Failure as a Design Criterion”, Tutorials on learning
from interactive failure.
(4) Biezma, Maria Victoria, Schanack, Frank, “Collapse of Steel Bridges”, Journal of
Performance of Constructed Facilities, Sep2007, Vol. 21 Issue 5, p398-405
(5) Washer, Glenn A., “Developing NDE Technologies for Infrastructure
Assessment”, Public Roads, Jan/Feb2000, Vol. 63 Issue 4, p44
(6) Cho, Aileen, Ichniowski, Tom, Angelo, William, Armistead, Tom, Barner, Craig,
Bodilly, Lucy, Schwartz, Eileen, Van Hampton, Tudo, Wood, Deb, “Engineers
Await Tragedy’s Impacts”, ENR: Engineering News-Record, 08919526,
8/13/2007, Vol. 259, Issue 6.
(7) “Introduction to structural integrity”, The Open University,
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=233634
(8) Scott M. Kozel, “Why did the I-35W bridge collapse?”, 08/Aug/2007
(9) BBC Documentary, “The Silver Bridge Disaster”, A Peet Media Associates
production for The Open University.
http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/worldaroundus/silverbridge_parto
ne.html
(10) Benjamin A. Graybeal, R. A. Walther, Glenn A. Washer, Amy M. Waters,
“Ultrasonic Inspection of Bridge Hanger Pins - NDEVC”, Public Roads, Nov2000
(11) Jacob Feld, Kenneth L. Carper, “Construction Failure”, 2nd Edition, Published
by John Wiley and Sons, 1997, ISBN 0471574775.
(12) Mason County, West Virginia
http://www.pointpleasantwv.org/MasonCoHistory/MasonCountyHistoryWebPage
.htm

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