All articles tagged with #buckling
City investigators opened a preliminary criminal inquiry into what caused columns to buckle in a 37-story Midtown building being converted from offices to apartments; the probe by the NYCDOI and Manhattan DA is in its early stages with targets unclear as workers stabilize the structure and evacuations were carried out.
Two sections of the I-94 freeway in Minnesota buckled under extreme heat, with temperatures hitting triple digits. The buckling occurred near Moorhead, close to the state's border with South Dakota. Older, weaker roads expand beyond their design limits due to extreme temperatures, causing pavement to give way. This is not an isolated incident, as roadways have previously buckled under intense heatwaves. The impact of climate change on infrastructure is becoming increasingly evident, with reports indicating that deadly heatwaves in North America and Europe are a result of human-driven climate change.
Scientists from the University of Amsterdam have developed a new class of materials that are both stiff and good at absorbing vibrations by using materials that buckle, like thin metal sheets. These buckled materials can be kept lightweight and have a wide range of potential applications, from aerospace engineering to nanolithography. The researchers believe that these new lab-made materials, or metamaterials, can improve existing designs and make many new designs possible.
A study on the behavior of compressed elastic beams shows that the emergence of order is determined by geometry, not complex forces. The researchers fixed flexible plastic beams vertically between two horizontal plates and squeezed them together, causing the beams to bend and come into contact with one another. The order increased with compression and depended mainly on the ratio of the uncompressed beam height to the compressed beam height. The researchers also observed a set of phenomena that seemed to govern the emergence of order, including "clump-hole annihilation." The results could be useful for designing flexible materials and understanding interactions among flexible structures in nature.