We have already told you about the disaster of the Dali cargo ship, loaded to the brim and weighing over 116,851 metric tons, which violently hit one of the pillars of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, knocking down three main spans of the infrastructure in the early morning of the 26th. March 2024.
Now we know how violent the impact was comparable to that of 66 trucks launched at full highway speed. That is it left little time for the work teams on the bridge to reach safety and put an end to the existence of a structure that until then had fearlessly resisted the elements.
The event not only shook the local community but also attracted the attention of civil engineers, who are now busy understanding how a colossus of iron and steel could yield so dramatically to the force of a catastrophic collision, applying basic physical principles like the impulse and momentum theorem.
We can begin to understand the magnitude of force at play during the accident, which was estimated at approximately 11,985,072 kilogramsa value extraordinarily higher than the norm foreseen for impacts on the pillars of motorway bridges, set at approximately 181,000 kilograms.
This tragedy raises urgent questions about the resilience of our infrastructure and the effectiveness of safety measures currently in use, prompting engineers to explore new solutions such as protective barriers capable of absorbing the energy of the impact to prevent future disasters of this magnitude.
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