industry

In the aerospace industry, testing is critical in successful product development and implementation. Mechanical testing of materials and products used in aerospace applications is governed by strict standards and often require accreditation. The type of testing performed includes tensile, compressive, flexural, fatigue testing, and more.

The High Luminosity (HiLumi) upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) relies, amongst other additional upgrades, on superconducting 11 T dipole magnets for increasing the luminosity of the beam to enlarge the data sample for physics experiments. The new dipole magnets are manufactured from Nb3Sn superconducting elements that become very brittle after a very specific and necessary heat treatment during the manufacturing stage.

Concrete is one of the most widely used materials around the world. The construction industry is often involved in a wide array of testing which requires a variety of testing equipment. In addition to simple compression testing, testing standards such as ASTM C39, ASTM C109, ASTM C469, ASTM C1609 are among the test methods that can be followed to measure the mechanical properties of a concrete specimen. This blog post covers the mechanical testing of concrete in lab environments, its automation, and ways of achieving it.

Mechanical Testing of Concrete

Aesthetics and material durability are closely related in consumer-facing industries such as the automotive industry. In addition to designing an aesthetically pleasing interior environment, developers aim to create an interior with durable components to stand up to long-term use. This blog post covers the different mechanical tests used to ensure automotive interior parts pass the test for aesthetics, quality, safety, and durability.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12013879

Does anyone know more about the causes of that collapse?

Now that we supposedly know so much about mechanics, why does a small-span bridge like that collapse?  

It it because we are optimizing prematurely based on false confidence in numerical models?

-- Biswajit