Fenn College of Engineering
RESEARCH
SUCCEEDING WHERE ALL ELSE FAILS “FAILURE” EXPERT HARNESSES FORENSICS TO BUILD SAFER STRUCTURES DR. NORB DELATTE
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n the world of civil engineering forensics, you can learn as much from a dead bridge as from a dead body. Finding out why buildings, bridges and dams collapse – and how to keep it from happening again – is the life’s work of Dr. Norb Delatte. As Professor and Chair of CSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, he is a nationally known expert on how engineering failures provide clues that, like the phoenix of old, give rise to structures that are better designed and safer. “When structures and systems fail, the impact on society is enormous,” Dr. Delatte says. “It’s important for engineers to understand failure mechanisms. By studying these failures, we can learn to design better structures and systems and reduce the risk to the public.” Through his work, CSU is taking a lead role in an innovative program supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Delatte and his team have developed over 50 detailed case studies of structural failures and share them with 10 universities across the U.S., who in turn are developing their own cases. The case studies and the analysis process are embedded in all of the uni-
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versities’ curriculums. From these cases, students learn how failures happen from a wide array of disasters, from the Johnstown Flood of 1889 to the 2007 Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse. There are even case studies on failed project management such as the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and terrorist acts like the bombing and massive collapse of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Dr. Delatte, Dr. Joshua Bagaka’s from CSU’s College of Education and Human Services, and Dr. Paul Bosela from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are collecting data from their university partners on the use of failure case studies in the classroom. Data analysis will determine whether the inclusion of failure case studies has a significant effect on student engagement and learning. The case studies are found online at http://matdl.org/failurecases and are a companion to Dr. Delatte’s book, Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers (ASCE Press 2008). In cooperation with the NSF Materials Digital Library and Kent State University, the web site has been transformed into an interactive Wiki format with several dozen new case studies added. In addition, Dr. Delatte, Dr. Bosela and their colleagues lead workshops around the world on how to teach with failure case studies, reaching out to faculty throughout the U.S., England, Costa Rica, China, Ecuador and India. The researchers also recently obtained an Ohio Department of Transportation research contract to investigate premature cracking of concrete parapets on four bridges in the Cleveland area. “Failure prevention is the essence of engineering,” Dr. Delatte says. “Through our work, we want to improve the education of the next generation of engineers.” Dr. Delatte’s research and international lectures are supported by the NSF, National Institute of Technology, American Society of Civil Engineers,
American Society for Engineering Education, Ohio Department of Transportation, University of North Carolina, and ASCE International Groups in Costa Rica and Ecuador.
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Failure prevention is the essence of engineering... Through our work, we want to improve the education of the next generation of engineers.
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