Abstract
BRIDGE building may be reckoned amongst the earliest of the structural engineers' efforts, and locomotive construction as one of the first lines of development in mechanical engineering; but the adequate study of the actions of a locomotive on a bridge has required very modern resources in investigation, and all those refinements of experimental and analytical methods that mark the engineering technique of to-day. The problem in its various aspects and complexities has been very completely studied, with the aid of these resources, by the special Bridge Stress Committee appointed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1923. The Committee comprised highly representative scientific and technical engineers, under the chairmanship of Sir J. A. Ewing, of the o University of Edinburgh, and the full report of their deliberations and investigations has now been published. The remit of the Committee was " to conduct researches with reference to stresses in railway bridges, especially as regards the effects of moving loads." These comprehensive terms of reference have been very adequately interpreted, and the work of the Committee constitutes an invaluable study of the vibration of bridge structures under impact influences. Work with a somewhat similar motive had previously been attempted-notably by the American Railway Engineering Association in 1910, and by a special committee of the Indian Railway Board in 1917- but the present report goes much further and deeper into the subject.
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Vibration in Bridge Structures. Nature 123, 454–463 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/123454a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/123454a0