A major objective of design is to avoid failures; We shall start by considering failure in its broadest sense and illustrate this by a story related to one of the authors by his father, who was for many years concerned with construction in various parts of the world.
The supply of water to an industrial plant for which his company acted as consultant required the construction of a water tower in order to provide sufficient water pressure at the plant. The tower had to be fairly tall and was to be built of reinforced concrete.
A small local contractor was given the job of building the tower. He had no mechanical equipment and the concrete was all mixed by hand and taken to the tower in baskets carried on the heads of women.
The quality of the placing and compaction of the concrete was very poor and, by the time that the tower was about half built, it was clear that the tower could never be built to its full height and be filled with water. The resident engineer acting for the consultant condemned the tower and asked that it be demolished and a new tower built.
The local government officials were not prepared to lose face by admitting that the local firms were incapable of constructing the tower, so political pressure was brought to bear and this led to a compromise. The tower would not be built any higher and the tank would be installed at the existing level.
This was duly done and the tower was handed over by the contractor with, no doubt, great pride. It was, however, totally useless to the client because it was not high enough to do what it was required to do.
The tower did not fall down; nevertheless, it was a failure as far as the client was concerned as it was just as useless to him as if it had fallen down. This suggests a broad definition of failure along the following lines:
A structure has failed if it is, or becomes, incapable of fulfilling its required purpose. Clearly not all failures are of equal seriousness. The example of the water tower above is clearly a case where the failure was total as the resulting tower was useless. However, many failures, though they inhibit the proper functioning of a structure, either do not make it completely useless or the fault can be rectified without excessive expenditure. We can now look at various ways in which this may occur.
Functional failure:
The above example comes into this category. This is where the structure is simply unsuitable for its required function. There is no failure of the materials from which the structure is built, and the structure probably meets all the requirements of the appropriate design rules and regulations.
Failures of this type, or at least partial failures, are less uncommon than we might like to think. They are not necessarily the fault of the structural engineer or constructor; it is actually more likely that the fault lies in the client either not having analyzed sufficiently carefully what he needed or not having communicated his requirements to the design team with sufficient clarity.
Drains not placed at the lowest point of the area they are intended to drain, bridges with insufficient clearance for what is intended to pass under them, have all happened and fit into this category. The way to avoid such failures is for all parties to analyze the problem being solved and for all to be absolutely clear about what is required. This is probably the first task that should be carried out in any design.
Serviceability failures:
Serviceability failures are where the behavior of the structure under the service loads inhibits the proper functioning of the structure. Examples of this type of failure are very frequently due to excessive deflection. For example a beam that deflects to the extent that it distorts doorframes and makes it impossible to open the doors would be a serviceability failure.
Another example is where vibration of the structure, possibly due to machinery, makes it impossible to operate sensitive scientific equipment. Most serviceability failures are related to a lack of stiffness of the structure rather than a lack of strength.
Continue Reading about the "Types of Failure in Civil Engineering" on the next page below
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