Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2010
Publication Title
Engineering Structures
Abstract
The history of the development of practice in many engineering disciplines is, in large part, the story of failures, both imminent and actual, and of the changes to designs, standards and procedures made as the result of timely interventions or forensic analyses. All engineers, and more particularly structural engineers, should be failure literate. Failure literacy means knowing about the critical historical failure cases that have shaped the profession: not merely the surface technical details, but the environment, the communications difficulties and the procedural issues. In the US, an intensive effort has been under way for nearly a decade to promote failure literacy in engineering education and practice. A number of educational resources have been developed to make it easier for engineering students and practicing engineers to learn from failures.
Recommended Citation
Delatte, N. (2010). "Failure literacy in structural engineering." Eng.Struct., 32(7), 1952-1954.
DOI
10.1016/j.engstruct.2009.12.015
Version
Postprint
Publisher's Statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Engineering Structures. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Engineering Structures, 32, 7, (07-01-2010); 10.1016/j.engstruct.2009.12.015
Volume
32
Issue
7
Comments
This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation through several grants, DUE 0127419, DUE-0536666, and DUE-0919487. Funding and support have also been provided by the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and not of the National Science Foundation or the American Society of Civil Engineers.