33 fans injured at Daytona

[mr_bots]

Its preferred to fail the ductile member before the brittle connections because the failure is less catastrophic so you design the brittle to be stronger than the ductile.

That might be the plan to mitigate failure at the joint, but that does nothing to deny the fact that transitions and joints are a very frequent point of failure. The entire reason for over-engineering them, as you described, is precisely because of the propensity for those failures to occur there.

First off, now that I'm home and reread it, I didn't mean all this as dickish as it sounds.

None of the failures I've seen at joints have been caused by stress. Either shitty weld that cracked or fatigue.

 

[daddy]

Its preferred to fail the ductile member before the brittle connections because the failure is less catastrophic so you design the brittle to be stronger than the ductile.

That might be the plan to mitigate failure at the joint, but that does nothing to deny the fact that transitions and joints are a very frequent point of failure. The entire reason for over-engineering them, as you described, is precisely because of the propensity for those failures to occur there.

First off, now that I'm home and reread it, I didn't mean all this as dickish as it sounds.

None of the failures I've seen at joints have been caused by stress. Either shitty weld that cracked or fatigue.

You are making my point for me. These areas are prone to failure for any number of reasons. Sometimes, that's shitty welds and fatigue, sometimes it's the fact that those areas are less likely to bend and more likely to break.

Point here is that a solid piece of fence that was able to flex and give would have likely reduced the carnage. I'm not saying it was guaranteed to stop it, but it, IMO, was more likely to have weathered that situation with less injury to the fans.

Do I think they didn't try to take precautions; no. Do I think they took a calculated risk; yes. Did that risk likely get some people hurt; yes. Is everything safe; no. Should they be sued; no. Should they consider testing those fence/gate transition areas to see if they should be moved/re-engineered; probably.

BTW, I didn't think you were being a dick, just an engineer.