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| The spectacular collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge has attracted the attention of engineers, physicists, and mathematicians in the last 74 years. There have been many attempts to explain this amazing event, but none is universally accepted. It is however well established that the main
culprit was the unexpected appearance of torsional oscillations. We suggest a mathematical model for the study of the dynamical behavior of suspension bridges which provides a new explanation of the Tacoma collapse. We show that internal resonances, which depend on the bridge structure only, are the source of torsional oscillations. |
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