Article

2004-05-23 Europe

Paris CDG airport roof collapse kills six

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Posted by Bulldog 2004-05-23 7:52:14 AM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Call home Chris.

Posted by Shipman 2004-05-23 12:19:52 PM|| 2004-05-23 12:19:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 sounds like bad design, or the schedule had higher priority than QA/QC

Posted by Frank G 2004-05-23 12:29:25 PM|| 2004-05-23 12:29:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 "The reason for the collapse...was not immediately clear"

Hah!Massive bribes and kickbacks to get contract,then substandard material,shoddy construction and unskilled labor used.Some minor inspector will be found guilty of taking bribes,be scapegoated and France will move on to its normal hate-the-US-and-the-Jews life.

Somewhere Churchill,Eden,Roosevelt,Truman and Eisenhower are laughing over possible headline:Head of de Gaulle is defective,collapses

Posted by Stephen 2004-05-23 1:57:04 PM|| 2004-05-23 1:57:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 BBC is now saying 5 dead, 6th victim not confirmed.

The BBC's background story (which also has a reverse-angle photo) says the part that collapsed was a departure lounge. From the pictures, it appears the collapsed section is made up of oval elements that form a tube (looks like about 40' high x 80' wide) without any internal supports. This tube then rests on pillars about 1 storey high. While the account says the "roof" collapsed, it looks to me like the underpinnings broke loose, which dropped the whole thing. The individual oval sections stayed more or less intact, although separating from each other. The span that fell looks to be about 60' long.
The oval part is what was innovative, the supporting structure appears to be just plain old post-and-lintel construction. So if support failure casused the collapse, I'd tend to agree with Stephen in suspecting material or construction problems, rather than bad engineering. But it's also true that modern cost and aesthetic pressures force designs closer to the limits of the materials used. There's not as much allowance for safety (big beams are expensive, and they look ugly). So it's possible that somebody screwed up their calculations. That would be really bad news, because, if so, it's likely the whole building is at risk.

Couple of things for engineering geeks to think on: The section that collapsed included a jetway, which penetrated the side of the tube. That would reduce the strength of that section, and the weight of the jetway would put a torquing stress on the supporting structure, unless it was balanced in some way. And it appears that there was not a lot of connection between adjacent oval elements (note that the section broke away cleanly), which means that there'd be nothing to take the load if a support failed.

Posted by Old Grouch 2004-05-23 7:45:51 PM|| 2004-05-23 7:45:51 PM|| Front Page Top

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