Rhythmic vibration as a potential cause of U.S. structural collapses

The porch collapse injury attorneys at Denena & Points note that this past Sunday, a crowded porch on a popular student apartment complex near Cornell University collapsed suddenly during a weekend party. The sudden porch collapse occurred at 208 Williams Street in the Pam Johnston Apartments.

Apartment personnel have since begun warning the students to avoid “rhythmic vibration” on the porches if they don’t want them to collapse. In other words, groups of students from Cornell University should not dance on the porches during weekend parties. The coordinated harmonics and resonance vibrations engendered by the dancing could be even more damaging than jumping up and down on the structures according to apartment complex representatives.

Apartment representatives have said that the porch collapse resulted from overcrowding of the structure and that the porch had been structurally sound prior to its collapse. According to witnesses, around 50 people had been sandwiched shoulder to shoulder on the 12’x12′ porch just prior to its collapse. And the apartment complex representative insisted that fractures in the floor joists evidenced stress from overloading. (Source: The Cornell Daily Sun, 8/23/12)

The warnings by the apartment complex representative probably take advantage of the phenomenon of “resonance disaster” to try and shift liability for the Cornell University area accident elsewhere. Resonance disaster could cause violent swaying motions and catastrophic structural failures in improperly constructed objects that include buildings, bridges, and even airpalnes.

Our porch collapse injury attorneys emphasize that building designers often put a great deal of thought into mitigating potential damage from resonance disasters in order to avoid the costly liabilities that could result. They might, for instance:

• Install shock absorber amounts to absorb and dissipate resonant frequency energy. For example, the Taipei 101 bulding uses a 660 ton pendulum, a tuned mass damper, to dissipate resonance dangers.
• Some structures resonate on a frequency that won’t typically occur in order to avoid dangers.
• Buildings in earthquake-prone areas account for expected oscillating frequencies from ground motion .
• Motor design creates frequencies that won’t be otherwise encountered in the mechanical motions.
• Some structures may resonate at more than one frequency in order to mitigate the dangers.

The periodic oscillation of a structure in a resonance disaster transfers the energy of the vibration to the structure and stores it there until the additional energy exceeds the structure’s load limit and causes a structural collapse. Any structural collapse can cause dangerous and deadly injuries. Learn more about the dangers of rhythmic vibration in a structure in this articleby the experienced porch collase injury attorneys at Denena & Points.