A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
The Darlington Building Collapse: Modern Engineering and Obsolete Systems
The 1904 collapse of the Darlington Apartments during construction was a sudden and complete failure: eleven stories fell into a pile of rubble less than 15 feet high in a matter of seconds, killing 25 people. The collapse and forensic analysis were prominently reported in the newspapers and engineering press; thirty years later, the publicity was cited as a deterrent to structural use of cast-iron columns. This failure became permanently linked to the shortcomings of cast-iron structure. If completed, the Darlington would have been typical of an obsolete structural type: the high-rise cage-frame building. Cage frames, first built in the 1870s, had an iron frame supporting the floor gravity loads and surrounded by a self-supporting masonry wall that provided lateral stability to the building. The use of cast-iron columns in commercial buildings with cage frames had effectively ended by the mid-1890s; the structural engineers who were increasingly used as consultants in commercial high-rise design preferred wrought-iron and steel columns. Wrought-iron and steel were known to have lower allowable direct compression stresses than cast iron, but were ductile and could safely withstand accidental tension and moment. The gradual replacement of cast-iron with the ductile metals in the late nineteenth century was encouraged by fears of collapse caused by the brittleness of cast iron. Cage frames remained popular in high-rise apartment houses for nearly a decade after they were no longer used in commercial construction. Unlike tall commercial buildings, which were built in cities throughout the United States, tall residential buildings were concentrated in a few cities, especially New York. These buildings were typically designed by residential architects working without consulting engineers. Common practice was for the iron sub-contractor to provide "engineering services," often consisting of sizing steel and cast-iron columns from tables based on the span and floor load schedule. In short, lateral load analysis was not part of the design, so the deficiencies of cage framing were not made visible. This paper will describe the design and construction background to the failure, the forensic analysis performed at the time, a modern review of the failure, and discussion of cage-frame failures within the engineering community.
The Darlington Building Collapse: Modern Engineering and Obsolete Systems
The 1904 collapse of the Darlington Apartments during construction was a sudden and complete failure: eleven stories fell into a pile of rubble less than 15 feet high in a matter of seconds, killing 25 people. The collapse and forensic analysis were prominently reported in the newspapers and engineering press; thirty years later, the publicity was cited as a deterrent to structural use of cast-iron columns. This failure became permanently linked to the shortcomings of cast-iron structure. If completed, the Darlington would have been typical of an obsolete structural type: the high-rise cage-frame building. Cage frames, first built in the 1870s, had an iron frame supporting the floor gravity loads and surrounded by a self-supporting masonry wall that provided lateral stability to the building. The use of cast-iron columns in commercial buildings with cage frames had effectively ended by the mid-1890s; the structural engineers who were increasingly used as consultants in commercial high-rise design preferred wrought-iron and steel columns. Wrought-iron and steel were known to have lower allowable direct compression stresses than cast iron, but were ductile and could safely withstand accidental tension and moment. The gradual replacement of cast-iron with the ductile metals in the late nineteenth century was encouraged by fears of collapse caused by the brittleness of cast iron. Cage frames remained popular in high-rise apartment houses for nearly a decade after they were no longer used in commercial construction. Unlike tall commercial buildings, which were built in cities throughout the United States, tall residential buildings were concentrated in a few cities, especially New York. These buildings were typically designed by residential architects working without consulting engineers. Common practice was for the iron sub-contractor to provide "engineering services," often consisting of sizing steel and cast-iron columns from tables based on the span and floor load schedule. In short, lateral load analysis was not part of the design, so the deficiencies of cage framing were not made visible. This paper will describe the design and construction background to the failure, the forensic analysis performed at the time, a modern review of the failure, and discussion of cage-frame failures within the engineering community.
The Darlington Building Collapse: Modern Engineering and Obsolete Systems
Friedman, Donald (author)
Fourth Forensic Engineering Congress ; 2006 ; Cleveland, Ohio, United States
Forensic Engineering (2006) ; 339-352
2006-10-03
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
The Darlington Building Collapse: Modern Engineering and Obsolete Systems
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