Experts raise new doubts about essential Bay Bridge rods

[cpzilliacus]

Sacramento Bee: Experts raise new doubts about essential Bay Bridge rods

Yun Chung, a retired engineer and metallurgist, read the official report explaining why massive, high-strength steel rods on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge broke last March and was stunned — then alarmed.

At first glance, Chung said about the July report, he saw obvious errors — some typographical, others that confused basic terminology. Digging deeper, he discovered more important problems. He concluded that the analysis defied metallurgical science and common sense.

"I think it's very shameful that in this public document, this important (oversight) report, there are so many errors. (I have) a sense of outrage,"  Chung said in an interview last week.

Diverting attention from caring for his disabled wife, Chung, 81, said he spent hundreds of hours reviewing the report, consulting the technical literature and writing — with another engineer — a 105-page rebuttal. Chung, who had worked for Bechtel Corp., and Lisa K. Thomas, a materials engineer at Berkeley Research Company, a consulting and test lab, recently prepared an 18-page supplement to the report after a request from The Sacramento Bee to further detail their concerns.

[cpzilliacus]

TOLLROADSnews: New East Span of Bay Bridge in serious danger due to incompetence of specs testing & oversight - engineers in report to state senate

[hm insulators]

Here we go again!