Challenging American Bridge

Bridges have been used for thousands of years, beginning with natural formations, such as huge rock arches (Appendix A). The first bridges made by humans were most likely simple spans of wooden tree trunks laid across streams, or planks, such as rafts tied together (Gascoigne, 2001). These simple designs evolved over time, as new materials became available, to form the hundreds of bridges we use today. Some basic bridge designs include truss, arch, beam and suspension bridges. The most basic of these is the beam bridge (Appendix B1), which consists of a deck, spanning a relatively short distance, that is held up by a pair of abutments (vertical supports at either end). When weight is placed on

There are many reasons why we use bridges on a daily bases. Such as for roadway use, waterway, railway etc. Many people don’t think about the reasons behind a simple truss bridge because it takes no effort to drive over one, and because they are there for your use. If you don’t consider truss bridges you most likely don’t think of the physics, the timing, effort, and hard work to make the truss bridge. On my essay on Truss bridges I will over run the history of a truss bridge, the process, types of truss bridges, roadbed types, types of truss bridges, and famous truss bridges from around the world Created by

The report debates the Tacoma narrows bridge failure and the different theories of how it came about, using information about what type of bridge it is and the forces acting on it before and during the collapse. It also discusses ways in which the failure could have been avoided, from changes in the design to modifications to the bridge after its construction.

Initially, suspension bridges before 1940 were made of piers, towers, wires, anchorages, and roadways. Piers were the main foundation for the suspension bridges. There usually were two of them, which were made out of cement and were entrenched in ground underneath the body of water that the bridge was spanned across. Towers were built on top of the piers to provide a means of connection for the roadways and wires. Wires were connected to the towers, roadways, and anchorages to provide tension support for the weight of the bridge. The anchorages were large cement platforms that were planted into the ground on either side of the land so that the wires could be connected to it. Lastly, the roadways were the main point of the suspension bridge. They usually were wide enough to provide four lanes of traffic and stretched from one side of the bridge to the other. This was the basic design of the suspension bridges

There are many differences between our bridge and other bridges. One being location. Another one being that thing that was sacrificed for it. Another one being cost. Also another difference would be weight and capacity, and the size or length.

Bridges are a vital part of people’s everyday life and without them people would not be able to do nearly as much as is possible today. The weather in the outer banks of North Carolina is very rough and can be very detrimental to the various structures on them. When hurricanes come near North Carolina the outer banks are hit the worst. Bridges on the outer banks keep being destroyed by weather and so the people there have to think about the cost, the effectiveness, and the need between a strong expensive bridge that will be able to handle rough weather or a cheap quick to build bridges that may fall with any extreme weather.

The I-35W Bridge, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a bridge that opened in November of 1967 and was designed by Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, Inc. The bridge had a truss arch design that spanned a total distance across the Mississippi River of 1907 feet. Also, the bridge was a deck truss which means the roadway was located on top of the truss itself. With a total of 4 piers, 2 on either side of the Mississippi River, that supported the bridge, the I-35W Bridge crossed the Mississippi River in 3 main spans; the longest span, which was located directly above the river, was 458 feet long. On August 1, 2007, the I-35W Bridge collapsed and sent the 80+ vehicles on the bridge into the Mississippi River.

Bridges are structures that become very susceptible as time passes. In Oregon there have been many bridges being identified to be seismic vulnerable. In an article by Ed Jahn, he sates, “nearly sixty percent of state-identified lifeline bridges likely to collapse or be potentially taken out of use after a quake” (Jahn). Bridges are a whole different story because they aren’t easy to be re-evaluated when they are used constantly by people to get around. The problem with many of these structures, though is that more than half of these bridges were built before 1970 (Jahn). Because of this they aren’t reinforced with new building codes making them highly vulnerable to any disaster to the point of collapsing. It isn’t an easy thing to fix the problems with a bridge because many seem stable but are still at great risk. It is known that “Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going to break,” (Rosenker). Even when a bridge is being identified to see if it’s stable a lot of the time they are thought to be ok, but are really in a bad condition. Because they aren’t fully evaluated, and if a disaster were to hit in a certain location it could cause the bridge to

When the bridge was tested, at 26 pounds of pressure, it began to buckle. The top support near the middle of the bridge on one side caved in, and as the weight increased, more of the top supports collapsed. At 47.3 pounds of pressure, the bridge snapped in half. By the end of the testing, the bridge had lost all of it’s top supports, two sections of diagonal supports on either side, and a small portion of the roadway.

The man who drew the designs for the bridge was John Low Waddell. The people of Duluth were eager to build the lift bridge, which would have been about 130 feet wide. However, the War Department declined the design that John Waddell made, and the project was canceled before it could be built. Waddell's design went on to be built in Chicago. New plans were later drawn up for a structure that would bring people from one side to the other. This type of bridge was first demonstrated in Bilbao's Vizcaya Bridge in 1893. The Lift Bridge was then finally completed in 1905. After the history is learned the structure is very important as well to know. The height of the Lift Bridge is 180 feet when completely raised and the length is 386 feet and weighs approximately 900 tons. The bridge is very similar to the only other one of its kind in the world, which is in Rouen, France. The last and most important thing that

With New Yorks skyscrapers it is hard to believe that the United States was not the leader of the construction of the first modern bridge in the world, according to Historic American Engineering Record(2008), the first modern bridge in the United States was built in 1 November 1855, and was named Gasconade Bridge, it was made out of Wooden Rail Bridge. Bridges are built all over the United States for different purposes but they are built to connect two parts of land together for transportation for instance, Hoover Dam Bridge, and others are built for commercial reasons and some are built for tourism for example, the Royal Gorge Bridge. But they have the same concept of connecting to lands together regardless to the reasons that they were constricted for. It

The basic design of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge itself was a suspension bridge with a center span of 2800 feet and two side spans of one 1100 feet (Farquharson, 1950, p. 17). Its two lane, reinforced concrete roadway was twenty-six feet wide with two 5 foot, 9 inch sidewalks (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Overall the superstructure was 5939 feet, including the suspension structures, approach spans and anchorages (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Anchorages were made of solid concrete and were fifty feet by 170 feet and were fifty feet high (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). The main towers which the cables saddle were 425 feet in height and with a spacing of thirty-nine feet at the top and fifty feet at the bottom (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Each cable consisted of nineteen strands of galvanized wire and totaled a diameter of seventeen inches. The design of the bridge may sound rather large and structurally stable but as mentioned before the bridge was designed to be very sleek looking. By

The most dramatic bridges use complex systems like arches, cables, or triangle-filled trusses to carry the roadway between majestic columns or towers. However, the work-horse of the highway bridge system is the relatively simple and inexpensive concrete beam bridge.

Because of advancements in today’s technology in construction field, many types of bridges are being constructed depending on the requirement and their suitability for the situations.

The point of this book is to present the most popular cases that involve bridge failures. Every case included careful analysis of the bridge that had collapsed, and theories that have arose. The book organizes the cases by the date of the failure, making it easier for readers to understand the progression that engineers have