SEF Spring Lecture- April 6, 2010

Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Structural Engineers with Norb Delatte, Ph.D.

Careful study of failures provides valuable lessons for practicing engineers. Is there a need, however, for engineers to have a basic understanding of critical, historical failure cases – a failure literacy? What are some common causes of failures? Patterns of repeated failures are particularly worrisome. What are the mechanisms for learning and disseminating lessons from failures, and how well have they worked?

It is important to consider history and failure analysis in the context of design. Design can be viewed very simply as a two-step process: figuring out everything that can possibly go wrong, and then making sure that everything that can possibly go wrong doesn’t happen.

From this standpoint, designers must be failure literate in order to know what can go wrong.  Another way to put it is that structural engineering is simply failure prevention.  This talk will cover some of the key failures that have helped shape structural engineering. 

Norbert Delatte, P.E., Ph.D., F.ACI, is a professor at Cleveland State University.  Dr. Delatte obtained his BSCE from the Citadel in 1984, his Master’s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996.  He served for eleven years on active duty as an officer in the United States Army corps of Engineers.  He is a past chair of the Executive Committee of the ASCE Technical Council on Forensic Engineering.  Dr. Delatte is the author of the recently published ASCE Press book, Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers, ASCE Press, 2009.