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Collapse of U.S. 35 Highway Bridge, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, December 15, 1967 (HAR-71/01)

National Transportation Safety Board · 1970-12-16 · 202 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This is the final highway accident report (NTSB-HAR-71-1) from the National Transportation Safety Board, adopted in December 1970. It covers the collapse of the U.S. 35 bridge between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Kanauga, Ohio, on December 15, 1967, which killed 46 people. The Board found that the cause was a cleavage fracture in eyebar 330 at joint C13N. That fracture grew from a flaw produced over 40 years by stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue, in a spot that could not be seen or found by inspection.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

FIGURE NUMBER LEGEND PAGE NUMBER

11 Micro-Probe Evidence of Sulfur 38

(a) Freshly exposed steel surface

(b) Near lip of pre-existent crack

12 Cleavage Fracture in Hanger U17 - C17 N 41

(a) Normal view showing paint in upper left and longitudinal crack in center

(b) Oblique view showing evidence of torsion

13 Cleavage Fracture in Chord L12 - L13 N 43

(a) Crack origin at rivet hole

(b) Reflective specks in south channel

14 Rivet Fractures in Hanger Connection at U13 N 44

15 Eyebar with Gage Locations and Initial Cut Lines 48

16 Circumferential Stress Contours for Initial Cuts, Specimen B-17 49

17 Radial Stress Produced by Layer Removal, Specimen B-17 50

18 Fracture Toughness Test Arrangement for $0^{\circ} \mathrm{F}$ Temperature 51

19 Specimen Configuration with Strain-Gage Locations for Full-Scale Fracture Test 53

20a Room-Temperature Fatigue-Crack-Propagation Rates for Eyebar Material 55

20b Effect of Temperature and Environment on the Fatigue-Crack-Propagation Rates for Eyebar Material 56

21 Test Setup for Wedge-Force Loaded Specimens under Environmental Conditions 59

22 Microprobe Area Scans at Site A 61

23 The Effect of Strain Rate on the Three-Point Bend Properties of A-7 Steel Charpy V-Notch Specimens 63

24a Appearance of Freshly Opened Crack in Eyebar Steel 67

24b Fracture Regions in Freshly Opened Crack in Eyebar Steel 67

25 Appearance of Branch and Secondary Cracks Associated with Fracture in Eyebar No. 330 69

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 202 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.