General Technical Information : The Bridge

This spectacular bridge is 8,981 feet, or 1.7 miles, long. The total weight of the bridge is about 887,000 tons. The two towers stand 726 feet above the water and 500 feet above street level. They weigh

Since the creation of the Goodwill bridge, the amount of traffic on the bridge daily has been noticeably increasing. On an average week, over 40’000 people travel across the bridge due to its convenience and easy accessibility. For the university students of QUT that catch the train in every day to Southbank, it provides fast and easy travel to and from

The inside structure obliged a sum of 68 tons of 30m long, 1500mm measurement fortifying pens. These heaps are socketed 2m into the bedrock underneath the Brisbane River. The pre-assembled strengthening pens must be built to tight resistances to guarantee the site lapping of the enclosures continued easily and productively.

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

Calculations were performed to determine the effectiveness of the design of the platform. Allowing for a safety factor of 1.5 times the design weight of 10kg and considering the bridge must not be overdesigned; plans were made for the bridge to fail at 25kg, 2.5 times that of the design weight. According to the calculations, the bridge would hold a load of over 15kg and experience failure at 20kg in the members. These calculations were later disproven in the testing, breaking 8kg earlier than expected, due to unforseen errors. An analysis of the bridge design and calculations has been included at the end of this report.

The design error along with a few other factors led to the collapse of the bridge. When the bridge first opened, the traffic deck had 2 lanes of traffic going in each direction for a total of 4 lanes. However, in 1998, the bridge was renovated so that there were 4 lanes of traffic going in each direction for a total of 8 lanes. Along with a few other bridge renovations, the weight of the bridge was significantly increased. Also, the rush hour traffic and the construction vehicles located on the bridge for repairs during the day of collapse added a considerable amount of weight too.

The design of the arch was perfected by the Romans, who devised ways to reinforce the arch so that it was able to evenly distribute the weight that it would bear without crumbling. They used concrete to strengthen the midsection of the arch and to seal the stones together to create a stabler structure. The construction of a basic arch is very straightforward. It consists of two piers, a series of voussoirs, and the keystone. Piers are vertical supports

The construction was difficult to design so many years ago because there was no surface bedrock. Engineers were also concerned with both high wind speeds and earthquakes. They did not have regulations that were required to follow regarding these problems. Instead architects and engineers chose designs

During the construction, two half-spans being assembled 50 meters above ground level had a misalignment of 4.5 inches or 114mm in camber. It was suggested by John Holland & Constructions to use a kentledge to weigh down the higher section of bridge. It so happened that they had ten, eight tonne concrete blocks on site. These were placed halfway along the higher span to

It is shaped in a way to transfer weight to the towers and anchors with its tension (O'Connor, 1971, p. 372). Cables are made of high strength wires spirally bound to form a rope (O'Connor, 1971, p. 372). Vertical cable suspenders that are fastened to the main cables hang the actual roadway. Stiffening girders and trusses are along the side of the bridge to distribute concentrated loads and help to keep the motion of the bridge at a minimum (Troitsky, 1994, p115).

The original design of the bridge was a two cell prestressed concrete box girder with three main spans (as mentioned above). However, as most of the water's commercial and pleasure boats use no pilot or tug, the potential environmental impact of a pier collision with possible subterranean damage, was deemed unacceptable.

When a strip foundation is to be used on a sloping site the most economic solution is to use a stepped foundation which will reduce the amount of excavation, construction under ground, backfill and trench support. The provision of stepped foundations following the line of the ground requires each step to be between 150 and 225millimetres in order to accommodate brick or block courses. The lap of concrete at the step should be not less than the depth of the foundation concrete and never less than 300millimetres whichever is the greater.

Superstructure bears the load that is being passed over the bridge and it transmits the forces caused by the same to substructure. Load received from the decking is transferred on to the substructure by Bearings. They also distribute the load evenly over the substructure material as it may not have sufficient strength to bear the superstructure load directly. Piers and Abutments are the vertical substructures which transfer the load to the earth in the foundation. Wing walls and returns are constructed as the extension of

Galvanized corrugated steel sheets are placed above the bridge girders from flange to flange to act as a stay-in-place deck form. Furthermore, these steel deck forms act to provide support for the reinforcing steel in the deck slab as well as supporting the weight of weight concrete during the construction process. Corrugated steel stay-in-place deck forms remain in place for the live of the structure thus serving to eliminate the need of form stripping and the associated schedule time. Corrugated Steel Stay-in-Place Deck Forms can be used on steel and precast – prestressed

reviewed and illustrated by comparison of the solutions adopted for two major European cable stayed