tallbridgeguy

This may be old news but they are interesting photos…

Bridge deck replacements are becoming more frequent as our infrastucture matures. (okay its old.)

In this case, a 400′ steel girder bridge, with integral abutments, was in the process of getting a new deck. The ends of the steel girders were left encased in concrete (integral abutments) and you can see the result.

From what I understand, the temperature only reached the low 70s, resulting in the bending of the girders due to temperature expansion.

I’m not sure what the final solution was in this case? Removing fill behind the abutment to allow the abutments to move and take the pressure off the steel or wait until the sun went down….

Sorry to keep harping on the Four Mile bridge competition. (see post below) But you really should go and look at the three finalists presentations. I am struck by how many of the images are of structures/bridges that are so beyond the scope of this little bridge.

I mean, they are very impressive, but I don’t see how the design of the Sydney opera house is in the same league as the Four mile bridge, especially the final solution.

After viewing the presentations I feel let down by the actual final design….

Arup presentation material

Go to the Four Mile Bridge Competition webpage and click on the three finalist links. Wow, some of the websites have more bling than Paris Hilton! (Wow Paris and bridge design, I know how to appeal to the youth of America. I will probably triple my site hits!)

My cheezy websites barely have a single moving part let alone FLASH-tastic images and amazing lighting. Since I can find little mention of the budget for the bridge, I will assume from the participants websites, a lot. (Man I’m bitter lately…but imagine feeding those consultants and their interns.)

But seriously, I should have entered my team,

TBG, Calatrava, Menn, ARUP (they are always there), James Cameron (Avator 3D effects) and Lucusfilms for the robots. IT must be really hard out there that a little bridge in an industrial section warrants the heavy hitters of bridge design. (nawww, I’m not bitter..)

Update: Here is a screenshot form the Four mile bridge site. Really crappy images but it looks like some kind of curvy (four span!) bridge won. My initial reaction is blaah…an open contest would have been better. (One of them seems to be Calatrava-lite..)

I received a tip (thanks Nick) that Grimshaw / Arup / Scape won the competition but I still cannot find any information online.
Grimshaw recently completed this footbridge in Acton(?).

The bridge looks fine but look at this photo and see how difficult it is to incorporate pedestrian walking ramps at the ends of a bridge.

I was just playing around in Google Sketchup and I thought it might be fun to hand out homework problems in sketchup (not this semester in the future).

(Most of the students in my class have the textbook solutions for all the problems in the book. So I have been giving out custom homework.)

In the future I think it would be worthwhile to post homework in sketchup for three reasons.

1) It gives them a sense of what the structure really looks like and
2) it would “force” them to learn a 3D “cadd” program by working through sketchup.
3) they would have to look up the beam properties for different beam shapes..

This would add some visualization to the course and I think make it more valuable.

Halloween version.

Goth version.

I have been searching around the web looking for the results of the March 27 public presentation. A winner was to be crowned that night but I can’t find anything on the intertubes.

Anybody know who won? Can you share some pictures?

Fight! Fight!

Well…not really but the Happy Pontist has written a great post in answer to a comment on the Techniker blog…..concerning an earlier HP critique. The bridge in the center of the discussion is the River Wear Bridge. A very interesting design until it gained some weight….

But it actually doesn’t matter which bridge is at the center of the discussion, it is the discussion that matters. (I think HP is being fairly polite in his response to the comment, maybe overly polite. He needs to go all medieval…)

What I like, FINALLY, is engineers getting back in the discussion about BRIDGES. Not architects but engineers. My advice, go to the Happy Pontist site and join in. (doesn’t matter which side)

As HP wrote, “What price joie de vivre?”