The individual cables that make up the supports for the Humber suspension bridge are connected to microphones and recorded by computer. This counts the individual stands snapping which will tell the Highway authorities when it is time to shut the bridge permanently.
But no mechanism to replace the broken ones and restress as a maintainence process, AFAIK
I don't see how you can replace a broken strand that is buried inside the complete cable comprising hundreds (thousands?) of strands and is then wrapped to protect it.
They would have to respin a new cable alongside the existing one and somehow transfer each hanger joint across from old to new. Impossible I guess.
A few years back I watched a documentary on one of the UK bridges where, I think, they were considering encasing the suspension wires and running air conditioned air through the casing to reduce the moisture. They were monitoring the cables with microphones to detect breakages.
Well they’ve been doing that with the Forth road bridge for many years.
Tim
The SS Great Britain was disintegrating fast after being towed back from Stanley, Falklands to Bristol for renovation. Now the hull is encased with glass at water level and below it is air-conditioned and kept warm and dry. God knows what the energy bill is maintaining the temperature and humidity, RTZ (as Rio Tinto Zinc was known) used to be a sponsor.
Similarly the Cutty Sark
which gave them the data that required a new bridge to be built.
Eventually the original, and the Humber (and the original Severn bridge) will presumably collapse.
There have been some which have been recabled.
Rather feeble for the whole building to collapse because a *flat* area next sank.
The 'flat area' was part of the supporting strucure of the whole thing,
Going by the computer simulation sequence, only a relatively small portion of the pool deck slab dished and collapsed with punch-thru pillar tops, ok near the high rise section though
Daft.
The flat area sagged and collapsed and in doing do it imposed a massive sideways force onto the vertical support columns holding up the central section, which then buckled, so that the building did a Ronan point, or two.
Or even 9/11 trade tower collapse. There the heat, well below steel melting temperature, made floor beams sag, the leverage straining the rivets/anchors at the columns that failed and then multiple floor pancake collapse
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