Updated August 10, 2026. The original post was written two days after the incident. This revision adds the investigation developments through early August, including the project engineer’s assertion that specified column reinforcement was never installed, and a new section on what that reinforcement would have… Read more
The image shows a MIL-S-901D Barge Test. A reader recently wrote in with two requests: (1) blog posts on surface ship shock and shock response spectra derived from acceleration data, and (2) coverage of underwater explosion (UNDEX) shock effects on submerged components such as batteries.… Read more
Union Pacific has begun spraying white paint on the sides of its rails in the hottest sections of its 32,000-mile network. The program, which entered targeted deployment in 2025, uses a hi-rail truck with a spray rig to coat both faces of the rail web… Read more
By Tom Irvine | Structural Integrity Series — Gatwick Airport Railway Station, United Kingdom The photograph above was taken at Gatwick Airport Railway Station — the busiest airport rail station in the United Kingdom, serving both the Gatwick Express and Southern/Thameslink services with approximately 19… Read more
By Tom Irvine While enjoying a glass of orange juice at an outdoor café in Madeira, Portugal on a sunny Independence Day morning, I noticed the reusable stainless steel straw resting across the glass — its elegant curved bend a perfect reminder that one of… Read more
Image courtesy of: https://www.rhfs.com Introduction Water hammer is one of those phenomena that every piping engineer encounters eventually—and usually remembers. It is the sudden, jarring metallic bang that makes everyone in the control room sit up straight, the distinct shudder transmitted through a facility’s pipe… Read more
Figure 1. Boeing 787 Aircraft Carbon fiber/epoxy laminates are widely used in aeronautic and aerospace structural components mainly because of their excellent specific mechanical properties. These laminates show mechanical properties similar or higher than the conventional metallic materials in terms of strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios. The… Read more
Update: Spacecraft On-Orbit Microvibration & Jitter Slides Introduction Spacecraft must withstand vibration from pre-launch transportation and from powered flight. The spacecraft is not powered during these events. In addition, a spacecraft must withstand “microvibration” or “jitter” from its own moving parts once it reaches orbit… Read more
I have begun work on a Matlab GUI finite element package for structural dynamics. This is a long-term work-in-progress! Here is the current package: vibrationdata_fea_preprocessor.zip vibrationdata_fea_preprocessor.m is the main script. The remaining scripts are supporting functions. * * * Here are sample input files in… Read more