Types Of Things That Structural Engineers Can Improve A Rigid Structure

A simple beam bridge that is flat across and supported at the two ends. A longer beam bridge can be held up along the middle by piers standing in the river. The weight of the bridge itself, plus the load that it carries, plus gravity are the downward forces are spread evenly across the length of the bridge. The upwards forces that hold the bridge up come from the piers. The Confederation Bridge in Canada is a famous beam bridge.

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.

Structurally, the bridge is a composition of two key metals steel (2 x 1011 Nm-2) and aluminum. These metals are common in bridges due to their properties of high strength and

The first example of an external force is the static (dead) load, this refers to the gravitational forces acting on the bridge itself. Every structure has to be able to support the weight of its own materials in order for it not to collapse, this is before any live load is applied to it. Another example is dynamic (live) load which refers to traffic, from people or vehicles, which move across the bridge and apply additional weight to it increasing the magnitude of vertical forces acting on the bridge. But environmental factors such as changes in temperature, precipitation and winds can also create vertical and horizontal loads on the bridge. (Bagga

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 purpose of the project is to investigate the Construction Engineering infrastructure and process involved with the designing and building of the Goodwill Bridge.

Truss bridges have been around for a long time. I see truss bridges the most out of all the different types of bridges and to me it seems like the most popular type of bridge. In addition there are thirty different types of Truss bridges which means that there is a bigger variety of Truss Bridges instead of just having one type. Truss bridges have triangular shaped beams that go all across the bridge. The bridge also is above the roadway instead of under the roadway like the arch bridge. Truss bridges could also stretch very far. The longest cantilever Truss bridge that goes is called Crescent City Connection and it is 13,418 feet long with a width of 52 feet. There is also a really long Truss bridge that is near Hoboken, the name of the bridge

This report mainly presents causes and consequences that resulted in the structural failure of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge which was constructed since 1964 and the further implication for me. It was found that the bridge collapsed due to undersized gusset plates, inefficient maintenance project and overloaded equipments. As a result of the abrupt collapse that brought about 13 dead and 145 injurers, the state government carried out a series of effective rescue, forced the designing company to pay the price and exerted themselves to eliminate pressures imposed on both traffic and business. It can be concluded that qualified engineers are required to be both ware of social responsibilities of engineers and adept at the professional skills that they specialised respectively.

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).

When bridges are poorly constructed, they may fail due to load they carry, collision by derailed trains or even by vehicles that lose control leading to catastrophic incidences. However, if bridges are well-constructed, the chances or injury are greatly minimized in the event of an accident. Discussed in the subsections are the requirements of AS 5100 standards in relation to cable-stayed bridges and include design requirements for bridges, bridge aesthetics, bridge functional requirements, bridge component design requirements and bridge construction

Since the bridge is a "critical piece of infrastructure" connecting drivers traveling between Arizona and California, the goal of Caltrans was to speed up the design and construction of the bridge. Caltrans selected Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods to significantly

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.

High rate of population grow and improvement in the technology forced individuals to move to rural area. As a result, they use more and more personal vehicles for traveling and commuting to urban areas and big cities each day. On the other side, most bridges in Canada and United States by now are more than 50 years old. Therefore, soon or later, rehabilitation or replacement on bridges are unavoidable (John R. Fowler). However, how to manage the bridge rehabilitation or replacement by having minimum effect on traffic is one of the biggest concern for engineers all around the world.

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.

We needed to fully utilise our knowledge by applying all the basic concepts in physics such as dynamic equilibrium and knowing the stiffness of the materials to build strong miniature bridge using given items to withstand the weight applied.