In engineering, the term “necking” is used to describe how a steel rod fails under tension. There’s evidence that necking contributed to the recent structural failure of a major bridge in Rhode Island. But Barzin Mobasher, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, part of the Fulton Schools, stresses that other factors were involved in causing the threatening deterioration of the Washington Bridge. Mobasher and another engineering professor talked to Rhode Island news media about what public officials everywhere can do to be aware of signs of such infrastructure erosion and to prevent the occurrence of similar threats to public safety in the future.

See a follow-up article in which Barzin Mobasher is also quoted: Was their ‘necking’ on bridge rods and should it have been caught? RIDOT backpedals on answer, Providence Journal, February 29