Building under construction collapses in George

konfab said:
To answer your question in two parts:

1) Buildings are made out of heavy materials, which will pulverise themselves and anything else around them once they start moving. Remember F=ma. Mass of the material a building is made out of is immense and it is accelerating at 9.81m/s^2. That dust you see everywhere in the video and aftermath is produced from the building material getting crushed.

There is a very good reason why structural engineers avoid the "a" part of Newton's second law.

2) Oh I can imagine that very easily. If the forces in play are enough to pulverise concrete into dust, imagine what it will do to a meatbag. Basically from the perspective of the building materials moving, a human body might as well be water in terms of its ability to resist forces. So throw 3-4 20l buckets of water over that site to simulate a human and see how easily you can find them.

In layman's terms:

Building:View attachment 1704859

Building.zip:
View attachment 1704861
Click to expand...
And even more simply, the building was under construction, so it was largely filled with air. It was just a shell at this stage.

So the debris is just the slabs and walls.

What I am struggling to see is any of the upper floor columns. Only bricks. Maybe they got pulverised? Its strange.
 
konfab said:
To answer your question in two parts:

1) Buildings are made out of heavy materials, which will pulverise themselves and anything else around them once they start moving. Remember F=ma. Mass of the material a building is made out of is immense and it is accelerating at 9.81m/s^2. That dust you see everywhere in the video and aftermath is produced from the building material getting crushed.

There is a very good reason why structural engineers avoid the "a" part of Newton's second law.

2) Oh I can imagine that very easily. If the forces in play are enough to pulverise concrete into dust, imagine what it will do to a meatbag. Basically from the perspective of the building materials moving, a human body might as well be water in terms of its ability to resist forces. So throw 3-4 20l buckets of water over that site to simulate a human and see how easily you can find them.

In layman's terms:

Building:

View attachment 1704859

Building.zip:
View attachment 1704861
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation. It makes me feel incredibly heartbroken for the victims.
 
off the top of my head, when I was in construction management.
Concrete supplier? Test results on supply. We also kept samples from pours on site.
Architect, Structural Engineer, Rebar company show us your drawings and sign off.

Professionals will be liable for this.
 
Spizz said:
Problem is, even the big well known companies don't carry so many of their own artisans and use a lot of sub contractors. In South Africa these days that is usually guys with no formal training who have learnt on the job. I had one guy who was a supervisor for the subbie who did the formwork for the slabs on a 12 storey building at Canal Walk. As much as I told him, and I told him every single time how the props need to be distributed on the floors below, he just didn't understand why. I had to inspect before a pour and then place a couple of guys on floors below during the slab pours to make sure no one moved a single prop because he'd start to move them for the next pour.
Click to expand...
I remember having an argument with the builder, that the requirements stated we need to support the garage lintels for x amount of days. He was like, no a few days is enough, but I told him since I was paying for the rental of equipment, I dont mind having it being supported for the full duration required.

I cannot recall how long was it supposed to be supported, but this was in 2011, and the garage is still standing.
 
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