To engineer is human the role of failure in successful design /
Topics include airplane accidents, bridge collapses, and fatigue cracks. Case studies include the Hyatt Regency Hotel (Kansas City) skywalk, the Crystal Palace, the de Havilland Comet, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
| Main Author: | Petroski, Henry. |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, N.Y. :
St. Martin's Press,
[1985]
|
| Physical Description: |
xiii, 247 pages ; 22 cm. |
| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
Table of contents |
Table of Contents:
- Being Human
- Falling Down is Part of Growing up
- Lessons From Play; Lessons From Life Appendix: "The Deacon's Masterpiece," /
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Engineering as Hypothesis
- Success is Foreseeing Failure
- Design is Getting From Here to There
- Design as Revision
- Accidents Waiting to Happen
- Safety in Numbers
- When Cracks Become Breakthroughs
- Of Bus Frames and Knife Blades
- Interlude: The Success Story of the Crystal Palace
- Ups and Downs of Bridges
- Forensic Engineering and Engineering Fiction
- From Slide Rule to Computer: Forgetting How it Used to be Done
- Connoisseurs of Chaos
- Limits of Design
- Cartoons illustrating public concern over engineering failures
- Models of the ubiquitous cantilever beam
- Brooklyn Bridge: Anticipating failure by the engineer and by the layman
- Crystal Palace: Testing the galleries and finding them sound
- Crystal Palace and two of its modern imitators
- Suspension bridges: The Tacoma Narrows and after
- Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways collapse
- Mianus River Bridge collapse and its aftermath.