Live load and dead load
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The primary function of a bridge is to carry traffic loads: heavy trucks, cars, and trains. Engineers must estimate the traffic loading. On short spans, it is possible that the maximum conceivable load will be achieved—that is to say, on spans of less than 30 meters (100 feet), four heavy trucks may cross at the same time, two in each direction. On longer spans of a thousand meters or more, the maximum conceivable load is such a remote possibility (imagine the Golden Gate Bridge with only heavy trucks crossing bumper-to-bumper in each direction at the same time) that the cost of designing for it is unreasonable. Therefore, engineers use probable loads as a basis for design.
In order to carry traffic, the structure must have some weight, and on short spans this dead load weight is usually less than the live loads. On longer spans, however, the dead load is greater than live loads, and, as spans get longer, it becomes more important to design forms that minimize dead load. In general, shorter spans are built with beams, hollow boxes, trusses, arches, and continuous versions of the same, while longer spans use cantilever, cable-stay, and suspension forms. As spans get longer, questions of shape, materials, and form become increasingly important. New forms have evolved to provide longer spans with more strength from less material.
Forces of nature
Dead and live weight are essentially vertical loads, whereas forces from nature may be either vertical or horizontal. Wind causes two important loads, one called static and the other dynamic. Static wind load is the horizontal pressure that tries to push a bridge sideways. Dynamic wind load gives rise to vertical motion, creating oscillations in any direction. Like the breaking of an overused violin string, oscillations are vibrations that can cause a bridge to fail. If a deck is thin and not properly shaped and supported, it may experience dangerous vertical or torsional (twisting) movements.
The expansion and contraction of bridge materials by heat and cold have been minimized by the use of expansion joints in the deck along with bearings at the abutments and at the tops of piers. Bearings allow the bridge to react to varying temperatures without causing detrimental stress to the material. In arches, engineers sometimes design hinges to reduce stresses caused by temperature movement.
Modern bridges must also withstand natural disasters such as tropical cyclones and earthquakes. In general, earthquakes are best withstood by structures that carry as light a dead weight as possible, because the horizontal forces that arise from ground accelerations are proportional to the weight of the structure. (This phenomenon is explained by the fundamental Newtonian law of force equals mass times acceleration.) For cyclones, it is generally best that the bridge be aerodynamically designed to have little solid material facing the winds, so that they may pass through or around the bridge without setting up dangerous oscillations.
The history of bridge design
Modern bridges, the focus of this article, began with the introduction of industrially produced iron. They have evolved over the past 200 years as engineers came to better understand the possibilities inherent first in cast iron, then in wrought iron and structural steel, and finally in reinforced and prestressed concrete. These materials have led to bridge designs that broke completely with the designs in wood or stone that characterized bridges before the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial strength has been an important factor in the evolution of bridges. Great Britain, the leading industrialized country of the early 19th century, built the most significant bridges of that time. Likewise, innovations arose in the United States from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century and in Japan and Germany in subsequent decades. Switzerland, with its highly industrialized society, has also been a fertile ground for advances in bridge building. In the early 21st century, China built a number of the world’s longest viaducts for its high-speed railways.
Early wood and stone bridges
The ancient world
Beam bridges
The first bridges were simply supported beams, such as flat stones or tree trunks laid across a stream. For valleys and other wider channels—especially in East Asia and South America, where examples can still be found—ropes made of various grasses and vines tied together were hung in suspension for single-file crossing. Materials were free and abundant, and there were few labor costs, since the work was done by slaves, soldiers, or natives who used the bridges in daily life.
Some of the earliest known bridges are called clapper bridges (from Latin claperius, “pile of stones”). These bridges were built with long, thin slabs of stone to make a beam-type deck and with large rocks or blocklike piles of stones for piers. Postbridge in Devon, England, an early medieval clapper bridge, is an oft-visited example of this old type, which was common in much of the world, especially China.
Roman arch bridges
The Romans began organized bridge building to help their military campaigns. Engineers and skilled workmen formed guilds that were dispatched throughout the empire, and these guilds spread and exchanged building ideas and principles. The Romans also discovered a natural cement, called pozzolana, which they used for piers in rivers.
Roman bridges are famous for using the circular arch form, which allowed for spans much longer than stone beams and for bridges of more permanence than wood. Where several arches were necessary for longer bridges, the building of strong piers was critical. This was a problem when the piers could not be built on rock, as in a wide river with a soft bed. To solve this dilemma, the Romans developed the cofferdam, a temporary enclosure made from wooden piles driven into the riverbed to make a sheath, which was often sealed with clay. Concrete was then poured into the water within the ring of piles. Although most surviving Roman bridges were built on rock, the Sant’Angelo Bridge in Rome stands on cofferdam foundations built in the Tiber River more than 1,800 years ago.
The Romans built many wooden bridges, but none has survived, and their reputation rests on their masonry bridges. One beautiful example is the bridge over the Tagus River at Alcántara, Spain. The arches, each spanning 29 meters (98 feet), feature huge arch stones (voussoirs) weighing up to eight tons each. Typical of the best stone bridges, the voussoirs at Alcántara were so accurately shaped that no mortar was needed in the joints. This bridge has remained standing for nearly 2,000 years.
Another surviving monument is the Pont du Gard aqueduct near Nîmes in southern France, completed in 14 ce. This structure, almost 270 meters (900 feet) long, has three tiers of semicircular arches, with the top tier rising more than 45 meters (150 feet) above the river. The bottom piers form diamond-shaped points, called cutwaters, which offer less resistance to the flow of water.
Asian cantilever and arch bridges
Wooden cantilever bridges were popular in Asia. The basic design used piles driven into the riverbed and old boats filled with stones sunk between them to make cofferdam-like foundations. When the highest of the stone-filled boats reached above the low-water level, layers of logs were crisscrossed in such a way that, as they rose in height, they jutted farther out toward the adjacent piers. At the top the Y-shaped cantilevering piers were joined by long tree trunks. By crisscrossing the logs, the builders allowed water to pass through the piers, offering less resistance to floods than with a solid design. In this respect, these designs presaged some of the advantages of the early iron bridges.
In parts of China many bridges had to stand in the spongy silt of river valleys. As these bridges were subject to an unpredictable assortment of tension and compression, the Chinese created a flexible masonry-arch bridge. Using thin, curved slabs of stone, the bridges yielded to considerable deformation before failure.
In the Great Stone Bridge (also called the Zhaozhou Bridge) in southern Hebei province, China, built by Li Chun between 589 and 618 ce, the single span of 37 meters (123 feet) has a rise of only 7 meters (23 feet) from the abutments to the crown. This rise-to-span ratio of 1:5, much lower than the 1:2 ratio found in semicircular arches, produced a large thrust against the abutments. To reduce the weight, the builders made the spandrels (walls between the supporting vault and deck) open. The Great Stone Bridge thus employed a form rarely seen in Europe prior to the mid-18th century, and it anticipated the reinforced-concrete designs of Robert Maillart in the 20th century.
