WHAT IS A BRIDGE?

According to Oxford Dictionary :

a structure carrying a road, path, railway, etc. across a river,
road, or other obstacle
According to Merriam-Webstar :
a structure carrying a pathway or roadway over a depression
or obstacle

WHAT IS A BRIDGE?
According to Wikipedia :
A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the
purpose of providing passage over the obstacle. There are many different designs that all serve unique
purposes and apply to different situations. Designs of bridges vary depending on the function of the
bridge, the nature of the terrain where the bridge is constructed and anchored, the material used to make
it, and the funds available to build it.

A HISTORICAL NOTE
The first bridges were made by nature itself as simple as a
log fallen across a stream or stones in the river. The first bridges
made by humans were probably spans of cut wooden logs or
planks and eventually stones, using a simple support
and crossbeam arrangement. Some early Americans used trees
or bamboo poles to cross small caverns or wells to get from one
place to another. A common form of lashing sticks, logs,
and deciduous branches together involved the use of long
reeds or other harvested fibers woven together to form a
connective rope capable of binding and holding together the
materials used in early bridges.

The Arkadiko Bridge in Greece (13th century BC), one

of the oldest arch bridges in existence

TYPES OF BRIDGES
There are mainly 4 major types of bridges. They are:
Beam Bridge
Truss Bridge
Arch Bridge
Cable Stayed Bridge
Suspension Bridge
Cantilever Bridge

BEAM BRIDGE
Beam bridges are the simplest structural forms
for bridge spans supported by an abutment or pier at
each end. No moments are transferred throughout
the support, hence their structural type is known as
simply supported.
The simplest beam bridge could be a stone slab or
a wood plank laid across a stream. Bridges designed
for modern infrastructure will usually be constructed
of steel or reinforced concrete, or a combination of
both. The concrete elements may
be reinforced, prestressed or post-tensioned.

Types of construction could include having

many beams side by side with a deck across the top
of them, to a main beam either side supporting a
deck between them. The main beams could be Ibeams (also known as H-beams), trusses, or box
girders. They could be half-through, or braced
across the top to create a through bridge.

TRUSS BRIDGE
A truss bridge is a bridge whose loadbearing superstructure is composed of a truss. This
truss is a structure of connected elements forming
triangular units. The connected elements (typically
straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or
sometimes both in response to dynamic loads. Truss
bridges are one of the oldest types of modern bridges.
The basic types of truss bridges shown in this article
have simple designs which could be easily analyzed by
nineteenth and early twentieth century engineers. A
truss bridge is economical to construct owing to its
efficient use of materials.

ARCH BRIDGE
An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end
shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by
transferring the weight of the bridge and its
loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the
abutments at either side. A viaduct (a long bridge) may
be made from a series of arches, although other more
economical structures are typically used today.

CANTILEVER BRIDGE
A cantilever bridge is a bridge built using cantilevers,
structures that project horizontally into space,
supported on only one end. For small footbridges,
the cantilevers may be simple beams; however, large
cantilever bridges designed to handle road or rail
traffic use trusses built from structural steel, or box
girders built from prestressed concrete.

SUSPENSION BRIDGE
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the
deck (the load-bearing portion) is hung below
suspension cables on vertical suspenders. This type
of bridge has cables suspended between towers,
plus vertical suspender cables that carry the weight
of the deck below, upon which traffic crosses. This
arrangement allows the deck to be level or to arc
upward for additional clearance.

CABLE STAYED BRIDGE

A cable-stayed bridge has one or
more towers (or pylons), from which cables support
the bridge deck. The cable-stayed bridge is optimal for
spans longer than cantilever bridges, and shorter
than suspension bridges. This is the range where
cantilever bridges would rapidly grow heavier if the
span were lengthened, and suspension bridge cabling
would not be more economical if the span were
shortened.

There are two major classes of cable-stayed bridges: harp and fan.
In the harp design, the cables are nearly parallel so that the height of their attachment to the tower is
proportional to the distance from the tower to their mounting on the deck.

In the fan design, the cables all connect to or pass over the top of the towers.

CONSTRUCTION METHODS
There are mainly 5 methods of bridge construction:
Incremental Launching
Balanced Cantilever
Span By Span Construction
Advanced Shoring
Heavy Lifting

INCREMENTAL LAUNCHING
The incremental launching method is particularly suited
to the construction of continuous post-tensioned multispan bridges. It involves casting 15 to 30m long sections
of the bridge superstructure in a stationary formwork
behind an abutment and pushing a completed section
forward with jacks along the bridge axis. The sections
are cast contiguously and then stressed together. The
superstructure is launched over temporary sliding
bearings on the piers. To keep the bending moment low
in the superstructure during construction, a launching
nose is attached to the front of the bridge deck.

BALANCED CANTILEVER
With the balanced cantilever method, the bridge
superstructure is usually built from one or more piers.
Normally, the structure advances from a short stub on
top of a pier, symmetrically in segments to the midspan or to an abutment the load balancing method.
The use of the cantilever construction method, for
medium and long span concrete bridges, is
recommended especially where it is difficult or
impossible to erect scaffolding

SPAN BY SPAN CONSTRUCTION

The span-by-span bridge method offers a very
high speed of construction. It is most often used
in conjunction with an erection truss under the
bridge segments or an overhead erection gantry
to guide the precast elements into position.

ADVANCED SHORING
The advanced shoring method or movable
scaffold system has been developed for multispan bridges over difficult terrain or water where
scaffolding would be expensive or simply not
feasible. A launching girder moves forward on the
bridge piers, span-by-span to allow placing of the
cast in-situ concrete. The method is highly
adaptable for a wide range of spans and types of
superstructure.

HEAVY LIFTING
Heavy lifting is a specialist hydraulic cable lifting
technique developed for exceptionally heavy loads.
The technique provides a particularly timely and
economic solution for projects based on modular
construction methods.

BRIDGE COLLAPSES
Bridge collapses are often tragic, but
are also fascinating for bridge engineers
as they usually provide puzzles to solve
and often lead to major changes in
design, construction and management.

SOME EXAMPLES OF
BRIDGES COLLAPSED

 Complete bridge collapses,

such as the highway bridge
that collapsed in Washington
State and the Minneapolis I35
West Bridge in 2007, are
relatively rare.
The cause of the Washington
bridge collapse is obvious; an
oversize truck collided with
critical structural elements.

35W bridge collapsed during the evening rush hour in

Minneapolis in 2007

135W BRIDGE
I35W collapsed because of
overloading during
construction and the faulty
design of a small but critical
structural component.

GALLOPING GERTIE
Galloping Gertie collapsed
because of trends towards
efficient design of North
American long-span bridges
and because memories of
similar wind-driven collapses
in Europe and USA had
become too distant.
"Galloping Gertie" Collapses November 7, 1940

PALAU BRIDGE
The failure of the KororBabelthuap Bridge in Palau,
Fig 1,occurred on 26 September 1996,at around 5:45
in the afternoon. Large hogging moments resulted
over the main pier, inducing far greater tensile
stresses in the top slab and upper region of the webs
than could be sustained. The webs therefore failed at
the top, resulting in near total loss of their shear
capacity. As a result, the Babelthuap side of the span
failed in shear, next to the main pier

NATURAL CAUSES
There are also well known examples of bridge
collapse due to flooding for example in Cumbria
in 2009. Bridges still collapse during earthquakes
because older designs missed out on important
new understandings about the way structures
work in earthquakes and have not been
upgraded. And by their very nature earthquakes
are random events; history does not provide
enough information to assess precise seismic
hazard everywhere structures are built, so we
learn by (painful) experience.

So how can engineers prevent

bridge collapse, and how can
engineers know if a bridge has
deteriorated or suffered damage
that compromises safety of users?

TOOLS FOR PREVENTION

Learned experiences from past failures

Building Codes
Structural Materials
Structural Designs
State Regulations
Federal Regulations
Sensory Devices
Traffic Cams
Construction Alternatives etc.

THANK YOU

References- https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-dobridges-collapse-14653 , Wikipedia