I did (and continue to do) a fair amount of consulting even though teaching was my main bag. When doing forensics, I tried--sometimes unsuccessfully, to live by two precepts: "don't get fixated on finding the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back" and "just because you are good at...
Qshake:
Many thanks for the thoughtful comments and advise. I will follow them; particularly now that the dust has settled. I couldn't agree more regarding the role of possible geo-induced displacements further loading the structure. That is what I have strongly suspected from the beginning...
Wiktor, bridgebuster:
I thank you gents for the time and interest. I am looking for suggestions on how to accumulate field data to put flesh in the theory and see if it holds water. Are there sources of info within the various E USA state DOT's that I could approach? Any cases you know about...
Thank you Qshake and Wictor, I do appreciate your time and comments.
A relatively little-known fact in E North America (US and Canada) is that shallow rocks are under very, very high horizontal stresses (geological reasons are unimportant for engineering purposes); there are many measurements...
Wiktor:
Back in 2005, shortly after the Dunn Memorial Bridge incident you posted the following:
"I have seen similar behavior on several different bridges, when each expansion/contraction cycle increased tilt of the rockers, already inclined in one direction, as the pier slowly was creeping due...
Hokie66 and Bridgebuster:
I appreciate the reference; in fact I already have it. The problem, as I see it, is that movement of the piers is dismissed outright, but I think some accurate inter-pier measurements may reveal something. We don't expect to see very obvious evidence of differential...
bridgebuster:
I taught geological engineering at the Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and I am interested in the abnormal position of rocker bearings on bridges. We have evidence that valley walls and floors in E USA sometimes move towards the center of valleys in response to horizontal...