https://techxplore.com/ en-us Tech Xplore internet news portal provides the latest news on electronics, technology, and engineering. The partial collapse of the Carola Bridge in Dresden in September 2024 was a wake-up call for Germany's infrastructure policy. At least 8,000 highway bridges and roughly 18,000 kilometers of railroad in Germany are now considered in need of repair, with the cost of necessary renovations currently estimated at up to 100 billion euros. Continuous infrastructure monitoring is expensive, so it has been neglected. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-effective-solution-aging-infrastructure.html Engineering Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:07:43 EST news686829998 Researchers from Skoltech and Harbin Institute of Technology have devised and tested a new mechanism for joining together the composite parts that make up bridges, the cooling towers of power stations, water treatment facilities, marine terminals, and offshore oil rigs. The solution provides an alternative to the heavy and corrosion-prone metal bolts. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-composite-rivets-lighter-corrosion-free.html Engineering Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:02:36 EST news684500530 New signs of deterioration recently discovered on the Île-aux-Tourtes Bridge in Montréal have spurred the Québec government to reinforce beams and install shoring just to keep the structure open. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-aging-bridges-crumbling-technologies-danger.html Engineering Mon, 08 Dec 2025 13:26:31 EST news684422762 Japan is facing the urgent challenge of aging infrastructure, amidst ineffective linking of on-site experience and expertise with vast amounts of digital data in maintenance operations. This is especially the case for bridges across Japan. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-generation-bridge-maintenance.html Engineering Fri, 28 Nov 2025 13:21:25 EST news683558462 Researchers at Lund University have developed a new framework that can lead to the Öresund Link, thanks to the right maintenance at the right time and smart monitoring, having a total lifespan of 200 years. This is twice as long as envisaged when the bridge was inaugurated 25 years ago. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-strategic-maintenance-resund-bridge-lifespan.html Engineering Tue, 25 Nov 2025 20:50:01 EST news683297153 A University of Houston scientist is helping reveal the world's weakest bridges—and how to fix them before it's too late. In a study of 744 bridges across the globe, published in Nature Communications, Pietro Milillo and an international team found that structures in North America are in the poorest condition, followed by those in Africa. Their solution could change how infrastructure is protected worldwide: monitoring bridge stability from space to detect problems before they become disasters. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-international-team-exposes-weakness-bridges.html Engineering Tue, 14 Oct 2025 12:07:04 EDT news679662422 Steel truss bridges are a common sight on roads and railways around the world, with many dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite their high strength-to-weight ratio, which allows them to support heavy loads, they are vulnerable to collapse. Some fail when one component breaks, while others remain standing. This puzzling difference has long been a mystery, but a new study has finally come up with an explanation. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-steel-truss-bridges-stay-potentially.html Engineering Thu, 04 Sep 2025 13:04:48 EDT news676209878 Suyun Ham can't take his eyes off a scanner. "Lower the sensors a little bit more," Ham urges an assistant. Then a barrage of data floods in, filling computer screens for a diagnosis. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-bridges-safe-mri-scan-disaster.html Engineering Mon, 01 Sep 2025 06:50:06 EDT news675927543 Italy's government on Wednesday approved a controversial 13.5-billion-euro ($15.6-billion) project to build what would be the world's longest suspension bridge connecting the island of Sicily to the mainland. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-08-italy-world-longest-suspension-bridge.html Engineering Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:10:02 EDT news673693720 An innovative 3D printing technique called cold spray was applied to a Western Massachusetts bridge last month in a first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept demonstration that could reduce the repair cost of critical infrastructure and disruptions to passing traffic. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-3d-nation-aging-bridges.html Engineering Thu, 12 Jun 2025 10:46:04 EDT news668943962 Italy hopes to begin constructing the world's largest suspension bridge connecting Sicily to the Italian mainland this summer amid widespread skepticism that it will ever be built. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-italy-forges-world-largest-suspension.html Engineering Thu, 12 Jun 2025 05:02:40 EDT news668923355 Nicknamed "Galloping Gertie" for its tendency to bend and undulate, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had just opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. In a now infamous failure, in the face of moderate winds the morning of Nov. 7, 1940, the bridge started to repeatedly twist. After an hour of twisting, the bridge collapsed. One fatal engineering assumption led the bridge to shake itself apart. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-wrong-expert.html Engineering Mon, 21 Apr 2025 09:01:09 EDT news664444862 Auto giant Stellantis said Thursday it was pausing production at some plants in Canada and Mexico, a major disruption for the sector on the day US President Donald Trump's auto tariffs came into force. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-stellantis-canada-mexico-production-trump.html Automotive Thu, 03 Apr 2025 13:23:04 EDT news662905380 When the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsed on March 26, 2024, engineers and city managers around the U.S. and world scrambled to assess the safety of infrastructure in their communities. Michigan State University researchers have developed a "deploy-and-forget" system that combines sensors with artificial intelligence, or AI, to assess the health of infrastructure like bridges, roads and dams, before and after events that could damage them. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-smart-future-infrastructure-disasters.html Engineering Thu, 27 Mar 2025 09:23:03 EDT news662286181 More than 40,000 bridges in the United States are deemed structurally deficient, and as many as 221,000 are deemed in need of repair, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. Florida International University (FIU) researchers have developed a system that could play a key role in restoring them. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-spray-concrete-bridge.html Engineering Tue, 25 Mar 2025 17:05:04 EDT news662141102 This month marks the seventh anniversary of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse in 2018, when a fatal design flaw resulted in the deaths of six people. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-bridge-collapses-ai-based-digital.html Engineering Fri, 21 Mar 2025 10:50:05 EDT news661771830 With more than 500 bridges crisscrossing the city of Philadelphia, they are an integral part of daily life. In a city defined by its rivers, bridges make possible the connections between people. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-foot-glass-bridge-blends-ancient.html Engineering Thu, 06 Mar 2025 10:25:06 EST news660479101 Elastomers similar to paint coatings developed at the University of Luxembourg and the Technical University of Darmstadt, were proven to help detect and monitor potential concrete cracks in existing or future buildings. Many of the tunnels and bridge infrastructure in Europe is more than 50 years old, and are approaching end of life with important maintenance needs, posing the threat of more disastrous accidents, such as the Morandi Bridge in Genoa in 2018 in Italy (43 deaths and 16 injured). https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-coating-concrete-bridges.html Engineering Mon, 24 Feb 2025 16:37:03 EST news659637406 Images of a collapsed tram bridge over the River Elbe in Dresden were seen around the world in September 2024. It's a miracle no one lost their life—unlike in the collapse of the motorway bridge in Genoa in 2018, which led to 43 deaths. Both disasters were caused not by external influences, but rather by damage processes associated with the age of the structures. These processes were not detected and rectified in time. https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-artificial-intelligence-maintenance-bridges.html Engineering Mon, 24 Feb 2025 15:05:38 EST news659631933 Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology developed a smart monitoring system that applies digital sensing technology to maintain and manage small- and medium-sized aging bridges. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-11-bridge-safety-digital-based.html Engineering Fri, 22 Nov 2024 14:00:11 EST news651506401 The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a cross-sea bridge connecting Hong Kong, Zhuhai, and Macao, spanning 55 kilometers. The bridge features a "bridge-island-tunnel" design, including a 6.7-kilometer undersea tunnel and two artificial islands, with a total investment of approximately 120 billion yuan. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-10-team-ai-driven-real-technology.html Engineering Thu, 10 Oct 2024 15:02:03 EDT news647791322 Bridges in New York, California, and Georgia are among United States bridges with the most traffic from the largest ships, according to a new and unprecedented data mining effort, the first step in an urgent assessment of the nation's bridge vulnerability following last spring's Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-reveals-bridges-large-ship-traffic.html Engineering Mon, 23 Sep 2024 16:08:50 EDT news646326527 Researchers from McGill University have developed a more efficient way to assess how likely a bridge is to be damaged in an earthquake. The information could help authorities prioritize infrastructure for upgrading and improve emergency response plans. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-bridges-earthquake-safety.html Engineering Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:29:00 EDT news645107336 Britain on Thursday finished building its longest-ever rail bridge after fitting the final segment of the Colne Valley Viaduct for the new high-speed HS2 train line, company bosses announced. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-uk-bridge-milestone-high-rail.html Automotive Thu, 05 Sep 2024 14:40:01 EDT news644765403 Many modern bridges use orthotropic steel bridge decks (OSBD), the decks being the surface sections of the bridge. OSBDs were designed to be lightweight and economical. However, this design has shown increasing issues with pavement cracking and fatigue damage at the welds that connect the bridge deck to the bridge superstructure. Fatigue damage is damage that accrues over time with use. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-06-high-cementitious-composites-bridge-deck.html Engineering Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:01:04 EDT news637423262 What are the quality assurance and quality control processes that underlie the design of new bridges in the United States? https://techxplore.com/news/2024-05-explores-bridge-analysis-states.html Engineering Thu, 23 May 2024 14:33:03 EDT news635693581 When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore, it was a disaster not only for the sheer amount of destruction, but because the accident prevented access to one of the busiest ports in the U.S. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-05-bridges-wreaking-havoc-chains-commuters.html Engineering Thu, 16 May 2024 13:40:45 EDT news635085641 The integration of microscale and macroscale simulations has long been a computational challenge in material science. Addressing this, researchers have developed AGAT, a machine learning model that efficiently predicts the behaviors of materials used in wearable electronics, particularly focusing on CNTs/PDMS composites. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-05-ai-approach-efficiency-material-multiscale.html Electronics & Semiconductors Mon, 06 May 2024 14:28:04 EDT news634224481 Despite their great trust in on-board autopilots, bridge officers do not believe that autonomous ships will make shipping safer. Moreover, the greater the professional commitment and pride of the bridge officers, the less confidence they have in automation increasing safety at sea. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-proud-seafarers-strong-safety-autonomous.html Automotive Thu, 11 Apr 2024 15:27:05 EDT news632068022 The cargo ship Dali knocked down three main truss spans, constructed with connected steel elements forming triangles, on the Francis Scott Key Bridge just seconds after crashing into one of the bridge piers early on Tuesday morning, March 26, 2024. https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-dali-key-bridge-heavy-trucks.html Engineering Mon, 08 Apr 2024 13:20:02 EDT news631800316