Cincinnati Red Stadium I-beam collapse

Roy McCauley (head of welding at Ohio State, deceased) showed the contractor how to flame-straighten a 30°-bent giant I-beam after a crane cable broke during erection of the Cincinnati Reds Stadium roof in the Pete Rose era. Replacement lead time was 18 months from the mill; flame straightening saved the schedule. Tom uses it as the canonical demonstration that residual stress always pulls in the opposite direction of the applied heat expansion.

So welding, we get residual stresses. Pipe bending, we put residual stresses in. There was a guy who used to be head of the Welding Department at Ohio State University — Roy McCauley, an expert, passed away now — and he told me that when they were building the Cincinnati Reds Stadium, back when Pete Rose was still playing, so a long time ago, they had the world's largest I-beams for part of the roof section. While they were trying to erect this, one of the cables on a crane broke and the beam came crashing down right across the big concrete wall, and they ended up with a beam bent rather than straight. It was a year and a half lead time to get a new beam from the steel mill, because they don't roll that size every day, and you can't go to some hardware store and pick one up.