Tay Bridge

Report of the Court of Enquiry upon the circumstances attending the fall of a portion of the Tay Bridge on 28th December, 1879, HMSO, London 1880. 

Engineering has certainly learnt a lot from both small and spectacular failures, such as the Scottish Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 (to continue the historical references to frameworks). 

The cross sections of the riveted tubular steel struts were informed by botanical studies of plant stems and made possible by the expertise of Clydeside s shipbuilders. The massive overstructuring was a reaction to the Tay bridge disaster a decade earlier. 

Rapley, Thomas Bouch The Builder of the Tay Bridge, 2008. Ambition was one of his traits, and Bouoh died a recluse two years after the disaster. 

Rothery s report into the 1879 Tay Bridge disaster (75 deaths) concluded that ... 

The most spectacular application example to date is perhaps the Aberfeldy footbridge over the river Tay in Scotland (see Fig. 11.4). This bridge is 113-m long, has a deck width of 2.2 m, and a main span of 113 m [4]. The entire deck structure, hand rails, and A-frame towers are pultruded composites, and the cable stays are Kevlar ropes. The deck structure is assembled from a modular system of pultruded 6-m long, hollow components, which consist of 70 percent by weight of E glass and 30 percent pigmented isophtalic polyester resin. 

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