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Germany: Carola Bridge in Dresden collapses into Elbe river | DW News

  • September 11, 2024



Germany: Carola Bridge in Dresden collapses into Elbe river | DW News

Officials in Germany are investigating the partial collapse of a bridge in the eastern city of Dresden. No injuries were reported, but shipping on the river Elbe has been halted, leading to major disruptions.

For more on this, we talk to Steffen Marx. He is Professor of Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden.

00:00 German bridge collapses
02:22 Interview with Professor Steffen Marx

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#Dresden #Bridge #Collapse

48 comments

  1. Ordinary citizen: This is symptomatic of the fact that everything has been neglected here.
    Engineer: These bridge designs from the 70s aren't ideal. We don't build them like that anymore.

  10. During extremely close approaches of the moon to Earth surface (less than 357,000 kilometers), normal Newtonian physics, which is used for computing structural loads in civil engineering; breaks down at the subatomic level, and are no longer valid. Other bridges have met the same fate, which is further aggravated by any lack of maintenance over the life cycle. If someone there can send me the center mass grid for the structural failure, I can compute the distance and position of the moon at the time of collapse.

  14. In around 1980 I was with a German computer engineer who opened up the casing of a computer built in Stuttgart and found a 40-kilo disc unit mounted with four bolts at the front of the rack and 2 cable ties at the back. At the time, disc units contained hefty linear motors and shook like an earthquake when heavily solicited. His verdict: "You have to understand that this is perfect. It was done by we Germans so it must be".

  19. Russian sabotage? I like the guy at 1:29 who is wearing a San Francisco fleece saying that he could imagine such a thing in Genoa (where a bridge famously collapsed) or the US, but not in Germany.

  22. Modern bridges rely on material strength. Horizontal structures are not inherently stable. Hence, when the material is compromised, such as rust, the structure will give way. Ancient bridges are curved or use curvatures to provide structural support.

  23. Have you considered that this might have been an act of sabotage think about it if you want to take down an old bridge that needs repairs and you don't want to be caught what do you use to take it down with not exblossoms you use compressed air doesn't leave an explosive residue and what I'm saying is you would take air tanks and overpressurize them until they rupture in the shockwave could push down a bridge like that I would dive the water to make sure there is no ruptured air tanks at the bottom of it have a great day now you see what happens in Baltimore is not immune anywhere in the world

  27. In laymans terms I think what he was trying to say is that the bridge is not overbuilt. That the engineers used exactly enough building material to construct the bridge to make it as quick, simple and economical as possible

  36. Going to be a lot more of these as these inherently flawed reinforced concrete bridge and building start failing more and more especially as places like Germany and other western countries slide back into the Middle Ages.

  40. Dresden citizen here.

    We are very lucky that no one was injured.

    Now it's like an attraction. With the current flood and sunshine, a strange picture.

    Who knows how long it will take for the bridge to be rebuilt. Or whether the other two bridge sections of the Carola Bridge may be used.

    The worst thing is that we have another bridge in Dresden, similar year of construction, similar construction. This bridge was to be rebuilt in 2020. Hopefully it won't happen there as well. You are only allowed to drive at 30 km/h instead of 50 on this bridge for a few years.

    My professor gave a great interview. 🙂

  46. Keep sending money and arms to Ukraine and keep parade and ruled by gay, and everything will collapse in the country!
    If you can not see it, then it will grow bigger every day.

  48. Classic continuous tripple span fatigue failure in top steel layers over supports of a highly loaded rail bridge.
    My first successful investigation for potential fatigue failure of tripple span prestressed concrete gantry beams, (for the Tiwai smelter in 1969), rejected this design due to a potential failure within ten years.
    With pretension and grouted post- tensioning, if micro cracks under repeatitive dynamic loading extend to any stressed steel; the linear length of such steel undergoes excessive loacalised strain, and hence, repetitive extra tensile stress due to this localised additional repetitive strain leading to typical sudden fatigue failure often exacerbated by frost penetration.
    I'm surprised it lasted over 50 years ..

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