Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation

v Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL ESSAY PAPERS ON Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation Please select only one case from the two attached cases and make a PowerPoint presentation about 17-20 slides. Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation I attached one example that you can follow. Below some points must be in the presentation: 1- Background 2- Ethical Issue 3- Code of Ethics 4- Ethical right attachment_1 attachment_2 attachment_3 The Aberdeen Three PHIL 210B: Engineering and Computer Science Ethics May 13, 2019 Organizations and People Involved ? ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND – U.S. Army facility, which employed the following three civilians: ROBERT LENTZ – Chemical Engineer. – In charge of developing the processes that would be used to manufacture chemical weapons. WILLIAM DEE – Chemical Engineer. – Headed the chemical weapons development team. CARL GEPP – Chemical Engineer. – He answered to Dee and Lentz. Events ? Since WWII, Aberdeen has been used by the US Army to develop, test, and dispose of chemical weapons. ? Periodic inspections between 1983 and 1986 revealed serious problems at the facility, known as the Pilot Plant, where these engineers worked. According to one inspection: ? “flammable and cancer-causing substances [were] left in the open; chemicals that become lethal if mixed were kept in the same room; drums of toxic substances were leaking. There were chemicals everywhere–misplaced, unlabeled or poorly contained. When part of the roof collapsed, smashing several chemical drums stored below, no one cleaned up or moved the spilled substance and broken containers for weeks.” ? All the managers had to do was make a request for Army clean-up funds, but made no effort to resolve the situation. ? September 17, 1985 – Acid tank leaks into Canal Creek. ? Federal investigators arrived and discovered that the chemical retaining dikes were unfit, and the system designed to contain and treat hazardous chemicals was corroded and leaking chemicals into the ground. ? March 26, 1986 – Pilot Plant shut down. ? June 28, 1988 – Gepp, Dee, and Lentz indicted. Additional Facts ? 1976 – Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Regulated the management of facilities used for the disposal hazardous waste. RCRA implemented criminal fines for violations of the open dumping or hazardous waste disposal guidelines. ? The three engineers maintained that they had no knowledge of RCRA Seems unlikely Containers of hazardous chemicals are routinely labeled with warnings that chemicals must be disposed of according to RCRA requirements Ethical Considerations ? Loyalty If the engineers had “gone public”, they would have violated their prima facie duty to be loyal to their employers. NSPE Code of Conduct: Section II.1. – Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties. – Every engineering code of conduct has a similar clause. Note: You need 3 clauses like this one. Ethics Filter ? Natural Rights No one died, so there is no violation of the Right to Life However, the negligence of the three engineers put the health and safety of others at risk: – Workers on site – Civilians downstream This violates the Right to the Security of One’s Person – Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights Ethics Filter ? Kantian Universalizability Maxim: It would be acceptable for all government engineers to merely rely on their own expertise, rather than EPA regulations on hazardous materials. Unlikely that Gepp et al. would approve such a maxim – Consider, e.g., engineers working with nuclear waste Hence, they fail the universalizability test – Ignoring the RCRA was a violation of ethical duty Evaluation ? The engineers involved violated a prime professional obligation (as well as the law). Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation Should have alerted their superiors at the first sign of problems. ? Each of them had the duty to know about the RCRA and to inform the appropriate civilian and military authorities of the violation. Given the danger to the public and workers at the plant, it would not have been sufficient to merely inform their direct supervisors. Alternatives/Incentives 1. Army Commanders: Make it part of the job requirements that engineers acknowledge all relevant safety regulations – Stiff individual penalties for violations Alternatives/Incentives 2. System for Anonymous Whistle-blowing The subordinates involved most likely feared that blowing the whistle would have jeopardized their jobs A system for receiving anonymous reports of safety violations would have alleviated this fear 7 former Union Carbide of?cials sentenced to 2 years for Bhopal gas tragedy By Rama Lakshmi Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A11 NEW DELHI — Seven former employees of Union Carbide were found guilty Monday of “death by negligence” and “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” for their role in the Bhopal gas tragedy, which claimed more than 15,000 lives a quarter-century ago. The former of?cials, all from India, were sentenced to two years in prison and ?ned more than $2,200 each. Survivors and victims’ groups immediately criticized the verdict and sentence as “too little, too late,” and the Indian government banned protesters from entering the court grounds to avoid confrontation. “This sentence is a joke on the people of Bhopal who waited 25 years for justice,” said Abdul Jabbar, a victim who heads the largest women’s survivors group. Rachna Dhingra, a campaigner for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, said, “The message of the verdict is that the corporations can come, kill and release toxic gases and nothing will happen to them.” The seven Indian citizens convicted include Keshub Mahindra, 85. Mahindra was chairman of Union Carbide in India when deadly plumes of the gas methyl isocyanate began leaking out of a pesticide factory shortly after midnight on Dec. 3, 1984. At least 3,000 people were killed immediately, and more than 500,000 people were affected by gas-related diseases. Survivors have demanded that Michigan-based Dow Chemical, the company that bought Union Carbide, clean up the soil and underground water at the factory site and the surrounding shanties, which were contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene and mercury. Advocates say thousands of residents continue to suffer from chronic illnesses such as poor eyesight and respiratory and gynecological problems. Union Carbide settled a civil lawsuit in 1989 and paid the Indian government $470 million to compensate the victims of the industrial accident. When the money was distributed in 2005 among 570,927 survivors, legal analysts in Bhopal say, most received the equivalent of $1,280. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation ?led criminal cases against top Union Carbide of?cials in the United States, Hong Kong and India. In 1992, the bureau separated the cases of Indians accused from those of the foreigners. India’s Supreme Court agreed in 1996 to reduce the charges against the Indian Union Carbide of?cials from “culpable homicide amounting to murder” to the less-serious “culpable homicide not amounting to murder” and “death by negligence.” The federal bureau said it examined 178 prosecution witnesses and exhibited 3,009 documents in the trial. Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation The Indian subsidiary of the company no longer exists. One of the eight Indians accused has died. Local news reports said the former of?cials quickly posted bail, which suggests that they are planning to appeal the verdict, the sentence or both. Activists in Bhopal have accused the federal bureau of mishandling the case. They say India should have brought the former chairman of Union Carbide, American Warren Anderson, to India to face trial. Anderson was detained brie?y after the accident but left India. He was charged with culpable homicide and later declared a fugitive for ignoring a warrant issued to bring him back to India. Of?cials made one attempt to get Anderson extradited to India from the United States, in 2003, but were not successful. © 2010 The Washington Post Company Ethical Issues from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse GUYER PARTNERS 44240 Clubhouse Drive El Macero, CA 95618 (530) 758-6637 [email protected] © J. Paul Guyer 20010 J. PAUL GUYER, P.E., R.A. Paul Guyer is a registered architect, civil engineer, mechanical engineer and fire protection engineer with over 35 years experience designing all types of buildings. For an additional 9 years he was a principal advisor on the staff of the California Legislature. He is a graduate of Stanford University and has held numerous local, state and national offices with the American Society of Civil Engineers. 1 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. HISTORY 3. DESIGN 4. OSCILLATION MITIGATION EFFORTS 5. THE COLLAPSE 6. THE INVESTIGATION 7. THE ETHICAL ISSUES 8. LESSONS LEARNED © J. Paul Guyer 20010 2 1. INTRODUCTION The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (all references made here are related to the original bridge, not its subsequent replacement which is in service today) was built in Washington State. It was constructed to cross the Tacoma Narrows, part of Puget Sound, between the city of Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It was the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time. Figure 1 Opening Ceremonies for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 (University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division, PH Coll. 290.25) © J. Paul Guyer 20010 3 Figure 2 The Tacoma Narrows Bridge today 2. HISTORY Interest in the construction of a bridge across the Tacoma Narrows developed as early as the 1880s when the Northern Pacific railroad proposed construction of a trestle bridge to carry railroad traffic. Nothing substantive was achieved by this early effort and, with the coming of the automobile, interest shifted to a bridge that would carry automobile traffic. In the 1920s business and government interests in the Tacoma area began to develop plans to seek financing for the project. Bridge engineers David Steinman and Joseph Strauss were consulted and in 1929 Steinman presented a specific proposal for design and construction of a suspension bridge. In 1931, however, Steinman’s contract with the Tacoma chamber of commerce was terminated because of a feeling that he was ineffective at raising funding for the project. Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation In 1937 interest was revived when the state of Washington created the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority (Authority). In response to a request from the city of Tacoma and others, the © J. Paul Guyer 20010 4 Authority initiated a study of the feasibility of financing a Tacoma Narrows bridge from toll revenue. This study concluded that toll revenue would not be sufficient to fund the design and construction. In the national security environment of the late 1930s, however, the U.S. military had a strong interest in seeing the bridge built because of the need for a direct route between the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton on the Pierce County side of the Narrows and the Army’s McChord Field and Fort Lewis on the Tacoma side. In addition, federal stimulus policies to bring the country out of the Great Depression looked favorably on public works projects to create jobs. Thus the economic and political forces were set in motion that in an indirect but meaningful way led to the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge; specifically, a strong political push for a bridge, but one that was going to have a tight budget because of low toll revenue projections. With the prospect of federal funding now in view, the Washington Department of Highways, under the direction of engineer Clark Eldridge, prepared plans for a suspension bridge using convention suspension bridge design practices as they were known at that time. Specifically, the roadway deck was supported by deep (25-feet) truss girders to stiffen it. The Authority submitted the Eldridge design to the federal Public Works Administration (PWA) with a request for $11 million. Figure 3 The Eldridge Design (Washington State DOT records) © J. Paul Guyer 20010 5 At this point a well known New York bridge engineer, Leon Moisseiff, submitted a proposal to the PWA and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to design the bridge at a cost of $8 million; a substantial saving in comparison. Most of the cost saving was due to Moisseiff’s replacement of the 25-feet deep roadway support truss girders with 8-feet deep plate girders. This was unquestionably a more elegant and slender design, but greatly reduced the stiffness of the bridge. The combination of cost savings, Moisseiff’s reputation, and the aesthetics of the slender design led to the design contract being awarded to Moisseiff and his associated engineering firm, Moran & Proctor, rather than having the design undertaken by Eldridge and the Washington Department of Highways. In June 1938 the PWA approved $6 million for the project with the remainder of the cost planned to be paid for by toll revenue. Construction began in September 1938, took only 19 months, and was completed at a cost of $6.4 million. Its main span was 2,800 feet, making it the thirdlongest suspension bridge in the world at the time. It was opened for traffic in July 1940 and collapsed in November of the same year. 3. DESIGN The theoretical underpinning of the Moisseiff design was described in a paper published in 1933 by Moisseiff and Fred Lienhard, a Port of New York Authority engineer, (Leon S. Moisseiff and Frederick Lienhard. “Suspension Bridges Under the Action of Lateral Forces,” with discussion. Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, No. 98, 1933, pp. 1080–1095, 1096–1141). In this paper a theory of elastic distribution was presented which went beyond the deflection theory that was developed by Josef Melan, an Austrian engineer, to horizontal bending under static wind load. This paper theorized that the stiffness of the main cables (via the suspenders) would absorb up to one-half of the static wind pressure pushing a suspended structure laterally. Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation This energy would then be transmitted to the anchorages and towers. Based upon this theory Moisseiff proposed stiffening the bridge with a set of eight-footdeep plate girders rather than the 25 feet deep trusses proposed by the Washington © J. Paul Guyer 20010 6 Department of Highways. This change contributed substantially to the difference in the estimated cost of the project. Additionally, because fairly light traffic was projected, the bridge was designed with only two opposing lanes with a total width of only 39 feet. This was narrow relative to its length. With only the 8 feet-deep plate girders providing depth, the bridge’s roadway section was substantially reduced. Figure 4 Tacoma Narrows Bridge under Construction (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, PH Coll. 11.19) © J. Paul Guyer 20010 7 Figure 5 Tacoma Narrows Bridge under Construction (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, PI-20789. Courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry, Seattle) The use of such shallow and narrow girders proved to be the undoing of the bridge. With such thin roadway support girders, the deck of the bridge was insufficiently rigid and was easily moved about by winds. The bridge became known for its movement. A modest wind could cause alternate halves of the center span to visibly rise and fall several feet over four- to five-second intervals. This flexibility was experienced by the builders and workmen during construction, which led some of the workers to christen the bridge “Galloping Gertie.” The nickname soon stuck, and even the public felt these motions on the day that the bridge opened on July 1, 1940. © J. Paul Guyer 20010 8 Figure 6 Tacoma Narrows Bridge Completed (University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division, PH Coll. 290.24) 4. OSCILLATION MITIGATION EFFORTS The oscillations observed during construction prompted proposals to reduce the motion of the bridge. Proposals that were implemented included: • attaching tie-down cables to the plate girders which were then anchored to 50ton concrete blocks on the shore. This measure proved ineffective, as the cables snapped shortly after installation. © J. Paul Guyer 20010 9 • adding of a pair of inclined cable stays to connect the main cables to the bridge deck at mid-span. These remained in place until the collapse but were ineffective at reducing the oscillations. • equipping the structure with hydraulic buffers installed between the towers and the floor system of the deck to damp longitudinal motion of the main span. The effectiveness of the hydraulic dampers was nullified, however, because the seals of the units were damaged when the bridge was sand-blasted before being painted. The Washington Toll Bridge Authority hired engineering Professor Frederick Burt Farquharson from the University of Washington, to undertake wind-tunnel tests and develop solutions to reduce the oscillations of the bridge. Professor Farquharson and his students built a 1:200-scale model of the bridge and a 1:20-scale model of a section of the deck. The first studies concluded on November 2, 1940; five days before the bridge collapse on November 7. He proposed two solutions: • To drill holes in the lateral girders and along the deck so that the air flow could circulate through them, thereby reducing lift forces. • To give a more aerodynamic shape to the transverse section of the deck by adding fairings or deflector vanes along the deck, attached to the girder fascia. The first option was not favored because of its irreversible nature. The second option was the chosen one; but it was not carried out, because the bridge collapsed five days after the studies were concluded. Engineering Ethics: Case Presentation 5. THE COLLAPSE On the morning of November 7, 1940 the wind was blowing through the Narrows at a steady speed of about 42 miles per hour. At 10 AM the bridge began to oscillate severely in the torsional mode and the bridge was closed to traffic. At 11:10 AM the center span collapsed. This is a link to a video clip showing the collapse: © J. Paul Guyer 20010 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mclp9QmCGs With the exception of a small dog, there was no loss of life or injuries as a result of the collapse. Figure 7 Collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on November 7, 1940 (University of Washington Libraries. Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives Division, PH Coll. 290.36) © J. Paul Guyer 20010 11 Figure 8 Broken Cable (PH Coll. 290.59 University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division, PH Coll. 290.59) 6. THE INVESTIGATION Investigation of the collapse was undertaken by a commission formed by the Federal Works Agency. The commission suggested three possible causes of the failure: • Random fluctuations in velocity and direction of the wind • Fluctuating eddy currents formed as the wind passed around the plate girders, that is, vortex shedding • Self-induced vibrations caused by wind fluctuation near the natural frequency of the bridge, that is, resonance © J. Paul Guyer 20010 12 The commission did not conclude which of these possible causes was predominantly to blame for the bridge’s collapse, but other early investigations tended to conclude that the probable cause was self-induced vibrations driven by vortex shedding as the wind passed around the solid plate girders. Subsequent opinions tended to attribute the collapse to aeroelastic flutter. Earlier suspension bridge designs typically had open lattice beam trusses supporting the roadbed. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the first suspension bridge to use solid Ibeams to support the roadbed. With earlier designs wind would pass through the truss and have minimal effect on the structure. With the Tacoma Narrows Bridge design, the wind would impact the solid girders directly and, consequently, would be diverted above and below the solid girders. After construction finished in June 1940, it was observed that the bridge would sway dangerously in relatively mild wind conditions. This vibration of the roadbed was transverse, that is, “up-and-down” like a sinusoidal wave. On November 7 at about 10 AM, a … Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10