Thread by @ZiadFazel

Interesting articles in Spring 2008 Aspire Concrete Bridge magazine, showing the type of damage that can occur from a rail tanker fire.

You might need to right-click and download the PDFs for the "Protect" and "Evaluate" articles.

#Kerch #CrimeanBridge
aspirebridge.com/magazine/2008S…

Here's an article about a sustained fire under the Interstate-85 bridge in Atlanta in March 2017.

Note:
• I am not a civil engineer, and have no access to damage assessments
• the rail tanker fire on the #CrimeaBridge was on, not under the bridge

usatoday.com/story/news/201…

Sample engineering assessment of damage to road bridge after rail tanker fire underneath it.
• important to know what burned and for how long
• Figure 3 shows the mapping of certain damage indicators to the piers near, and span above, the rail tanker.

aspirebridge.com/resources/Stod…

If this photo is accurate:
• rail bed beside burnt car appears to have sunk 10-15 cm
• some concrete sleepers appear to be missing there
• steel channel without sleepers between the rails is missing
• side of bridge behind men appears to have sagged

Don't know when this video was taken, but while these cranes are on the bridge trying to remove the rail cars (hours? days?) it is doubtful trains can travel on the other tracks.

Especially if the cranes need the tracks during any part of the operation.

This part of the bridge appears to be where the sunken rail bed is in other photos.

I am not a civil engineer or railway specialist, but I would expect a detailed damage assessment like this (or better) before using that bridge.

aspirebridge.com/resources/Stod…

Closer video of damage to the structure of the bridge.

Both upper and lower steel maintenance walkways have melted and sagged. This steel failure is an indicator of the heat energy coming from the tanker fires.

Even after the blast, how bad is Russia's security on Crimean Bridge? Even on the rail bridge, someone is openly taking video, then uploading:
• repair progress
• rail and rail bed damage
• which suggest how much heat released
• road bridge damage

Repair progress. At the time of video, of the 7 tank cars that caught fire:
• 2 complete cars remain on rails
• 1 car has tank removed, but frame and bogies remain, still coupled to next car's bogie
• 2 cars have 4 bogies left
• 2 cars fully removed

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogie

The heat is so intense that:
• the rail under the wheels collapsed
• the rail car axles warped

Priceless information for fire investigators, civil engineers, metallurgical engineers, bomb damage experts.

Two days ago, @zahed gave an initial assessment from the photos & videos available then. His civil engineering degree gives him a better foundation to understand them than my industrial systems engineering degree. I'm following now for any updates.

@zahed Rail bed damage.
• apparent sinking under 2 remaining tanker cars
• crushed stone between concrete sleepers missing
• suggests damage to underlying box structure

Maybe bridge is too weak to bring back cranes to lift tanks off, and rail too damaged to pull those cars away.

@zahed It seems:
• on one end of the fire, bogies & wheels have fused from the heat and cannot be pulled
• on the other end, the rail bed and underlying structure are too weak to bring back the cranes

This might be why all the people in orange vests are there: looking for solutions.

@zahed This video also show poor state of road bridge:
• intentionally bottlenecked to one lane
• red/white barriers adjacent to remaining rail cars
• no traffic on it - people on foot looking at it
• deflection and slant obvious, matches earlier video released by Russia

@zahed Around 20-second mark of earlier video from a car driving off that damaged section of road bridge, you hear a kerthunk.

This might be normal for such joints, or it may be from a larger deflection due to the explosion destroying the adjacent road span.

This @ConversationUK article released a few hours before the video from atop the rail bridge has 2 engineering professors - experts in bridge safety and blast engineering - assessing the damage revealed at the time. I'm interested in their updates too.

theconversation.com/crimean-bridge…