information:extraction
Disadvantages

A column of soldiers marching in regular step on a narrow and structurally flexible bridge can set it into dangerously large amplitude oscillations. On April 12, 1831, the Broughton Suspension Bridge near Salford, England collapsed while a group of British soldiers were marching across. Since then, the British Army has had a standing order for soldiers to break stride when marching across bridges, to avoid resonance from their regular marching pattern affecting the bridge.

Vibrations of a motor or engine can induce resonant vibration in its supporting structures if their natural frequency is close to that of the vibrations of the engine. A common example is the rattling sound of a bus body when the engine is left idling.

Structural resonance of a suspension bridge induced by winds can lead to its catastrophic collapse. Several early suspension bridges in Europe and United States were destroyed by structural resonance induced by modest winds. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on 7 November 1940 is characterized in physics as a classic example of resonance. It has been argued by Robert H. Scanlan and others that the destruction was instead caused by aeroelastic flutter, a complicated interaction between the bridge and the winds passing through it—an example of a self oscillation, or a kind of "self-sustaining vibration" as referred to in the nonlinear theory of vibrations.