The Superstructure Elements And Its Effect On The Portion Of The Bridge Structure

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

The final primary component of a suspension bridge is the deck, or the roadway upon which cars drive and pedestrians walk. The deck is built from massive pieces of steel-reinforced concrete hoisted into the air and laid into place upon the bridge. Deck pieces are connected with bolts and rivets, then suspension cables connect each section of deck to the main

Since the early days, the men try overcome environmental challenges and, in this process, ends up creating amazing masterpieces of engineering. Among this works, the bridges appears as the clearest representatives of how the mankind could adapt to Earth’s contours. If the shape of landscape can’t be changed, the bridges are the solution to link two places and allows the connection of the traffic to improve aspects such as the communication and the trade. Depending to the need, to the sources and to the environment, the bridge can be constructed in a specific configuration. There are five main sorts of bridges configurations. First, there is the simplest bridge, the beam bridge. Second, the arch bridge, one of the oldest kind. There are the truss, composed of set of trellises. Lastly, there are the cable-stayed and

The most common types are the beam bridges, arch bridges, suspension bridges, cantilever bridges, cable-style, and the kind I am going to research is truss bridge.

When the bridge was inspected at check-in, many of the officials said that the bottom supports of the bridge were

Bridges are structures that are quite fascinating to me. They are very useful in the real world, in terms of carrying weight across a previously uncrossable path. I decided I would investigate how to design structures that carry weight without collapse. I have thought of designing some structure that would stretch as far as 100 meters or so. I believe this to be theoretically possible and maybe someday applied in the real world. When designing such structure one must account for all the math one will encounter. This investigation will involve various concepts of math including geometry, trigonometry, and physics.

Design Elements: While building this bridge, the first design element, was the deck design. We took around one horizontal length of vertical popsicle sticks and lined them side by side, and repeated. Later we connected them together with a horizontal popsicle stick. I then took two lines and placed them ontop of eachother to create a flat surface. This way it will carry a lot of weight, and it will also run smoothly. After this I created trusses to put on the side, so that the weight would be evenly distributed amongst the bridge, instead of all the weight on one part. This would help stop the bridge from immediately bending once weights were put into the bucket. To make the trusses I had to take popsicle sticks and glue them into a triangle shape, and then glue them together from the bottom. This way they wouldn’t break apart. I then doubled them up so that it would be able to sustain more weight. Under the bridge I placed a lot of beams, so that the bridge would hold together from the bottom, instead of immediately bending once I placed a weight. I made the beam from gluing

Kaylie Griffin and I chose to build the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge located in Bristol, United Kingdom. A suspension bridge is a type of bridge which the deck is supported by cables that hang vertically off larger cables or hangers. Suspension bridges typically have two towers and are anchored to abutments at their ends.The towers help to support much of the weight that crosses the bridge’s deck, such as cars and people. The towers also dissipate the load directly into the planet Earth. These features of a suspension bridge are why they are strong therefore, one of the more popular designs for a bridge. When building our popsicle bridge, we had to add x shaped joints and brackets to help our

Prior of this time, most bridge design were based on trusses, arches, and cantilevers to support heavy freight trains. Automobiles were obviously much lighter. Suspension bridge design had been envolving into producing bridges of maximum grace, lightness and flexibility which actually was more suited for carrying lighter cars and not heavier train. Unfortunately, engineers did not fully understand the response of the suspension bridge design to these poorly understand forces. The second reson was due to the excitation of torsional mode. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built with shallow plate girders instead of the deep stiffening trusses of railway bridges, in which trusses allowed wind to pass through but plate girders, on the other hand, present an obstacle to the wind. As a result of its design, it was proved that the bridge was too light and unstable. And causing alloping Gertieaction which were driven by the wind were being experienced by the bridge.

There are only a very few limitations in the use of plate girders. Compared with trusses they are heavier, more difficult to transport and have larger wind resistance. The provision of openings for services is also more difficult. The low torsional stiffness of plate girders makes them difficult to use in bridges having small plan radius. Plate girders can sometimes pose problems during erection because of concern for the stability of compression

The construction process of our model suspension bridge went smoothly. We designed a blueprint that showed our bridge in a life size scale. The materials used to build our bridge included two 18 inch tall two by fours for the anchoring towers of the suspension bridge, one 30

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).

Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) is type of bridge construction that is getting more common all over the world and Canada. It is predicted that use of this kind of construction in bridge structures will move on with more frequency in near future due to decreasing the overall cost, onsite construction time, impact on traffic and environment (Multihazard Extreme Event Design for Accelerated Bridge

The bridge has a very well designed ‘sustainability’ concept, relying on upcycled materials to complete the bridge. These upcycled materials consist of the wood, the fishing net, the oil barrels and the plastic shielding for the barrels. These materials can be used for functional roles in the design, such as platforms, floatation, safety lines across hand rails, and so on. The bridge’s sustainability concept can be further supported by the ease of replacing materials, and not throwing them in the bin. The materials such as wood, plastic and pieces of metallic bolts and nuts can be recycled and reused for other purposed such as furniture, storage or completely recycled back into a molten form for the metallic objects.

(Vasani, 2011) Many components when assembled together form a bridge structure. Basic components of a bridge are superstructure or Decking, Bearings, Substructure which again consists of Piers and Abutments, Wing walls and Returns, and Foundation.