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This paper summarizes what was arguably the greatest American civil engineering failure of the last century, the catastrophic collapse of a two hundred foot high curved concrete gravity dam situated in a canyon some forty miles north west of the center of Los Angeles, resulting in several hundred fatalities. The learning from failure process is still an effective, if preferably avoidable, tool of benefit to all branches of engineering. Notwithstanding the fact that the failure of the St. Francis Dam occurred more than seventy-five years ago, the circumstances of its design, construction and demise, coupled with the many efforts made to investigate the event, continue to fascinate forensic engineers.
This paper summarizes what was arguably the greatest American civil engineering failure of the last century, the catastrophic collapse of a two hundred foot high curved concrete gravity dam situated in a canyon some forty miles north west of the center of Los Angeles, resulting in several hundred fatalities. The learning from failure process is still an effective, if preferably avoidable, tool of benefit to all branches of engineering. Notwithstanding the fact that the failure of the St. Francis Dam occurred more than seventy-five years ago, the circumstances of its design, construction and demise, coupled with the many efforts made to investigate the event, continue to fascinate forensic engineers.
The St. Francis Dam Failure
Shepherd, Rob (author)
Third Forensic Engineering Congress ; 2003 ; San Diego, California, United States
Forensic Engineering (2003) ; 168-177
2003-09-25
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Engineering Index Backfile | 1928
|Engineering Index Backfile | 1928
|St. Francis dam failure analyzed
Engineering Index Backfile | 1928
|Engineering Index Backfile | 1928
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003
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