“Bump” is a galactically humble description of a collision with a container ship weighing nearly 200 million pounds.
To illustrate this more cleanly, the momentum of a loaded Boeing 787 flying near top speed is 17,760,000 N.s. For this ship going at just 10 km/h, the momentum is about 260,600,000 N.s. In other words, the bridge would need to be able to sustain the equivalent of 14 9/11 attacks, simultaneously.
The way to tolerate incidents like this is to add multiple points of isolated failure so that even if one point is catastrophically destroyed, only a portion of the bridge goes down while the rest remains intact. I don’t think there are many, if any, structures on the planet that can withstand that much force
This right here. You’d need a frankly ridiculous amount of solid stainless steel to build pylons for seaway protection, and that’s for low speed impacts.
Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity!
I’m not a sailor it anything, but I suppose requiring tugboats for all harbor travel of shops over a gross weight might be a good thing. Makes more jobs, at least.
A container ship like that weighs more than the bridge tower it hit.
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“Bump” is a galactically humble description of a collision with a container ship weighing nearly 200 million pounds.
To illustrate this more cleanly, the momentum of a loaded Boeing 787 flying near top speed is 17,760,000 N.s. For this ship going at just 10 km/h, the momentum is about 260,600,000 N.s. In other words, the bridge would need to be able to sustain the equivalent of 14 9/11 attacks, simultaneously.
The way to tolerate incidents like this is to add multiple points of isolated failure so that even if one point is catastrophically destroyed, only a portion of the bridge goes down while the rest remains intact. I don’t think there are many, if any, structures on the planet that can withstand that much force
This right here. You’d need a frankly ridiculous amount of solid stainless steel to build pylons for seaway protection, and that’s for low speed impacts.
Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity!
I’m not a sailor it anything, but I suppose requiring tugboats for all harbor travel of shops over a gross weight might be a good thing. Makes more jobs, at least.
Also in designing such a resilient bridge, don’t forget one of the design requirements is to allow access to a busy shipping port
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Saying the bridge was bumped by the cargo ship is like saying someone got bumped in the head after having a brick thrown at them.
That was hardly a bump.