Timber truss bridges

In the 18th century, designs with timber, especially trusses, reached new span lengths. In 1755 a Swiss builder, Hans Grubenmann, used trusses to support a covered timber bridge with spans of 51 and 58 metres (171 and 193 feet) over the Rhine at Schaffhausen. Many timber truss bridges were built in the United States. One of the best long-span truss designs was developed by Theodore Burr, of Torrington, Connecticut, and based on a drawing by Palladio; a truss strengthened by an arch, it set a new pattern for covered bridges in the United States. Burr’s McCall’s Ferry Bridge (1815; on the Susquehanna River near Lancaster, Pennsylvania) had a record-breaking span of 108 metres (360 feet). Another successful design was the “lattice truss,” patented by Ithiel Town in 1820, in which top and bottom chords were made of horizontal timbers connected by a network of diagonal planks.

Early trusses were built without precise knowledge of how the loads are carried by each part of the truss. The first engineer to analyze correctly the stresses in a truss was Squire Whipple, an American who designed hundreds of small truss bridges and published his theories in 1869. Understanding precisely how loads were carried led to a reduction in materials, which by then were shifting from wood and stone to iron and steel.

Early designs

During the Industrial Revolution the timber and masonry tradition was eclipsed by the use of iron, which was stronger than stone and usually less costly. The first bridge built solely of iron spanned the River Severn near Coalbrookdale, England. Designed by Thomas Pritchard and built in 1779 by Abraham Darby, the Ironbridge, constructed of cast-iron pieces, is a ribbed arch whose nearly semicircular 30-metre (100-foot) span imitates stone construction by exploiting the strength of cast iron in compression. In 1795 the Severn region was wracked by disastrous floods, and the Ironbridge, lacking the wide flat surfaces of stone structures, allowed the floodwaters to pass through it. It was the only bridge in the region to survive—a fact noted by the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, who then began to create a series of iron bridges that were judged to be technically the best of their time. The 1814 Craigellachie Bridge, over the River Spey in Scotland, is the oldest surviving metal bridge of Telford’s. Its 45-metre (150-foot) arch has a flat, nearly parabolic profile made up of two curved arches connected by X-bracing. The roadway has a slight vertical curve and is supported by thin diagonal members that carry loads to the arch.

The use of relatively economical wrought iron freed up the imaginations of designers, and one of the first results was Telford’s use of chain suspension cables to carry loads by tension. His eyebar cables consisted of wrought-iron bars of 6 to 9 metres (20 to 30) feet with holes at each end. Each eye matched the eye on another bar, and the two were linked by iron pins. The first of these major chain-suspension bridges and the finest of its day was Telford’s Menai Bridge, over the Menai Strait in northwestern Wales. At the time of its completion in 1826, its 174-metre (580-foot) span was the world’s longest. In 1893 its timber deck was replaced with a steel deck, and in 1940 steel chains replaced the corroded wrought-iron ones. The bridge is still in service today.

Railway bridges

The rise of the locomotive as a mode of transportation during the 19th century spurred the design of new bridges and bridge forms strong enough to handle both the increased weight and the dynamic loads of trains. The most significant of these early railway bridges was Robert Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge, also over the Menai Straits. Completed in 1850, Stephenson’s design was the first to employ the hollow box girder. The hollow box gave the deck the extra stiffness of a truss, but it was easier to build and required less engineering precision—at the cost, however, of extra material. The wrought-iron boxes through which the trains ran were originally to be carried by chain suspension cables, but, during the building, extensive theoretical work and testing indicated that the cables were not needed; thus the towers stand strangely useless. For the Royal Albert Bridge (1859) over the River Tamar at Saltash, England, designer Isambard Kingdom Brunel used a combination of tubular arch and chain cable. The arches rise above the deck and, in conjunction with the chain suspenders, give the bridge in profile what appear to be a set of eyes. The bridge at Saltash also carries trains, and its two main spans of 136.5 metres (455 feet) are comparable in length to the Britannia’s 138-metre (460-foot) spans.

Among the most important railway bridges of the latter 19th century were those of Gustave Eiffel. Between 1867 and 1869 Eiffel constructed four viaducts of trussed-girder design along the rail line between Gannat and Commentry, west of Vichy in France. The most striking of these, at Rouzat, features wrought-iron towers that for the first time visibly reflect the need for lateral stiffness to counter the influence of horizontal wind loads. Lateral stiffness is achieved by curving the towers out at the base where they meet the masonry foundations, a design style that culminated in Eiffel’s famous Parisian tower of 1889.

Eiffel also designed two major arch bridges that were the longest-spanning structures of their type at the time. The first, the 1877 Maria Pia Bridge over the Duoro River near Porto, Portugal, is a 157-metre (522-foot) crescent-shaped span that rises 42 metres (140 feet) at its crown. Again, a wide spreading of the arches at their base gives this structure greater lateral stiffness. The crowning achievement of the crescent-arch form in the 19th century was represented by the completion in 1884 of Eiffel’s 162-metre (541-foot) Garabit Viaduct over the Truyère River near Saint-Flour, France. Unlike the bridge at Duoro, the Garabit arch is separated visually from the thin horizontal girder. Both arches were designed with hinges at their supports so that the crescent shape widens from points at the supports to a deep but light truss at the crown. The hinged design served to facilitate construction and also to produce the powerful visual image intended by Eiffel.

Suspension bridges

In the United States, engineer John Roebling established a factory in 1841 for making rope out of iron wire, which he initially sold to replace the hempen rope used for hoisting cars over the portage railway in central Pennsylvania. Later Roebling used wire ropes as suspension cables for bridges, and he developed the technique for spinning the cables in place rather than making a prefabricated cable that needed to be lifted into place. In 1855 Roebling completed a 246-metre- (821-foot-) span railway bridge over the Niagara River in western New York state. Wind loads were not yet understood in any theoretical sense, but Roebling recognized the practical need to prevent vertical oscillations. He therefore added numerous wire stays, which extended like a giant spiderweb in various directions from the deck to the valley below and to the towers above. The Niagara Bridge confounded nearly all the engineering judgment of the day, which held that suspension bridges could not sustain railway traffic. Although the trains were required to slow down to a speed of only five kilometres (three miles) per hour and repairs were frequent, the bridge was in service for 42 years, and it was replaced only because newer trains had become too heavy for it.

Roebling’s Cincinnati Bridge (now called the John A. Roebling Bridge) over the Ohio River was a prototype for his masterful Brooklyn Bridge (see below Steel: Suspension bridges). When this 317-metre- (1,057-foot-) span iron-wire cable suspension bridge was completed in 1866, it was the longest spanning bridge in the world. Roebling’s mature style showed itself in the structure’s impressive stone towers and its thin suspended span, with stays radiating from the tower tops to control deck oscillations from wind loads.

Railway bridges

Between the American Civil War and World War I, railroads reached their peak in the United States and elsewhere, increasing the need for bridges that could withstand these heavier loads. New processes for making steel gave rise to many important bridges, such as the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, the Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, the Hell Gate Bridge and Bayonne Bridge in New York City, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.

The 1874 Eads Bridge was the first major bridge built entirely of steel, excluding the pier foundations. Designed by James Buchanan Eads, it has three arch spans, of which the two sides are each 151 metres (502 feet) and the middle is 156 metres (520 feet). The Eads bridge was given added strength by its firm foundations, for which pneumatic caissons, instead of cofferdams, were used for the first time in the United States. Another innovation carried out by Eads, based on a proposal by Telford, was the construction of arches by the cantilevering method. The arches were held up by cables supported by temporary towers above the piers, all of which were removed when the arches became self-supporting.

The Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scotland, designed by Benjamin Baker, has two cantilevered spans of 513 metres (1,710 feet), which made it the world’s longest bridge upon its completion in 1890. The steel structure rises 103 metres (342 feet) above the masonry piers. Although from an approaching standpoint it appears dense and massive, in profile it exhibits a surprising lightness. Baker designed the bridge with an artist’s temperament. In his writings he criticized the Britannia Bridge for its towers, which Stephenson admitted had been left in place only in case the bridge needed suspension chains and not out of structural necessity. The Forth Bridge, on the other hand, is pure structure; nothing has been added for aesthetic appearance that does not have a structural function. For more than a century the bridge has carried a railway, and indeed it was one of the last great bridges built for that purpose in the 19th century.

The Hell Gate Bridge, completed by Gustav Lindenthal in 1916, also had an aesthetic intention. It was made to look massive by its stone towers and by the increased spacing of the two chords at the support, yet structurally the towers serve no purpose; the lower chord of the arch is actually hinged at the abutments, and all of the load is carried to the foundations by that lower chord. Nevertheless, the bridge has an imposing presence, and its arch of 293 metres (978 feet) was the world’s longest at the time.

Similar in arch form to Hell Gate is the 1931 Bayonne Bridge, designed by Lindenthal’s former associate, Othmar Ammann. Spanning the Kill van Kull between Staten Island, New York, and Bayonne, New Jersey, the Bayonne Bridge, though longer than the Hell Gate Bridge at 496 metres (1,652 feet), is significantly lighter. The main span for the Hell Gate required 39 million kg (87 million pounds) of steel, compared with 17 million kg (37 million pounds) for the Bayonne. Part of the reason is the lower live loads; for the Hell Gate, train loading was taken at 36,000 kg per metre (24,000 pounds per foot) of bridge length, whereas for the Bayonne the car loading was 10,000 kg per metre (7,000 pounds per foot). But the decrease is also due to an effort to make the arch more graceful as well as more economical. Massive-looking stone-faced abutments were designed for the sake of appearance but then were never built, leaving a rather useless tangle of light steel latticework at the abutments. Nevertheless, from a distance the Bayonne Bridge shows a lightness and delicacy that bespeaks structural integrity.

Across the world in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, Sir Ralph Freeman designed a steel arch bridge with a span of 495 metres (1,650 feet) that was begun in 1924 and completed in 1932. Because of the deep waters in the harbour, temporary supports were impractical, so the steel arch was assembled by cantilevering out from each bank and meeting in the middle. A high-strength silicon steel was used, making it the heaviest steelwork of its kind. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a two-hinged arch, with its deck 52 metres (172 feet) above the water. It carries four railroad tracks, a roadway 17 metres (57 feet) wide, and two walkways. On each bank it is supported by a pair of large stone towers that, like those of the Hell Gate, disguise the fact that almost the entire load is carried by the lower arch chord.