[ArchitectAnon]

The headline is misleading. They are saying that it seems to have failed due to some kind of mysterious fatigue failure at a wood to steel structural interface. The investigators are struggling to work out how because the timber was damaged when it hit bottom of the river and then damaged further when it was hauled out for inspection. The overloading in the headline seems to refer to the ‘load shedding’ to other structural members that will have occurred after the joint (or joints) failed. (I’m not a structural engineer, but my profession is closely related.)

[mc32]

Apparently the Siemen's Sports Arena failure[1] was attributed to brittle failure in dowelled slotted-in-plate connections, which is also what they used for the steel-wood interface for this bridge.

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Perkolo-bridge-after...

>"... An overview of capacity models derived using the yield limit equations and following the European Yield Model (EYM) approach is provided in [20]. Major examples of structures collapse led by brittle failure in dowelled slotted-in-plate connections are the two trusses of the Siemens Sports Arena in Denmark [21] and the truss of the Perkolo bridge in Norway [22]. Uncertainty in the evaluation of connections' deformability is responsible for local damage in connections, and change of force transfer mechanisms compare to those considered in the design. ..."