Catastrophic failure

2008-04-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

Catastrophic failure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure of some system from which recovery is impossible. The affected system not only experiences destruction beyond any reasonable possibility of repair, but also frequently causes injury, death, or significant damage to other, often unrelated systems. As such, catastrophic failures often lead to cascading systems failure.
The term is most commonly used for structural failures, but has often been extended to many other disciplines where total and irrecoverable loss occurs. Such failures are investigated using the methods of forensic engineering, which aims to isolate the cause or causes of failure.

Structural failure
Examples of catastrophic failure of engineered structures include:
The Tay Rail Bridge disaster of 1879, where the center half mile of the bridge was completely destroyed while a train was crossing in a storm. The bridge was badly designed and its replacement was built as a separate structure upstream of the old.
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge of 1940, where the main deck of the road bridge was totally destroyed by dynamic oscillations in a 40 mph wind.
The Banqiao Dam failure of 1975 and other dam failures April 27, 1987.
The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse of 1981, where a suspended walkway in a hotel lobby collapsed completely, killing many people on the structure and those below.
The Space Shuttle Challenger of 1986, in which an O-ring of the rocket booster failed, and the entire structure was lost,
The Space Shuttle Columbia of 2003, where damage to a wing caused at take-off caused total loss on re-entry
The total collapse of the multi-span I-35W Mississippi River Bridge on August 1, 2007

Computer failure
The term catastrophic failure is occasionally (and erroneously) used in computer software to indicate an unexpected error from which the system cannot meaningfully recover.

Catastrophic Complication

Catastrophic failure