Bridge

Danish architectural firm MLRP has come up with a novel way to prevent graffiti and vandalism of a local town hall. By turning the outside walls into mirrors, the team successfully transformed a "drab" building into a local attraction that is hopefully resistant to future graffiti attempts. Read More

China's L & A Design Group has created plans for an iconic pedestrian bridge projected for Wuxi Xidong Central Park, in Jiangsu, China. The bridge will connect the north and south foreshores of the park, and includes a man-made island in its design. The island will offer pedestrians commanding waterfront views and the opportunity to relax and enjoy the surrounding gardens or tea room facilities. Read More

Blackfriars Bridge, a Victorian rail bridge in the heart of London, is now well on its way to becoming the biggest solar array in the city and the world's largest solar bridge. When the installation is complete, the roof of the new Blackfriars railway station will be home to over 6,000 square meters (64,583 sq.ft.) of solar panels, satisfying half of the station's power needs. Read More

According to a 2009 estimate by the U.S. Society of Civil Engineers, more than one in four U.S. bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. While newer “smart” bridges have embedded wired networks of sensors to monitor their structural integrity, the high cost of installing such systems on existing bridges is simply unaffordable for strained city, state and federal budgets. Now University of Maryland electrical engineering researcher Mehdi Kalantari has developed a tiny wireless sensor that monitors and transmits minute-by-minute data on a bridge’s structural integrity that he estimates is one-hundredth the cost of a wired network approach. Read More

Bridges are generally exposed to the elements, meaning they generally get a nice dose of sunlight often coupled with some fairly strong crosswinds. For these reasons this “Solar Wind” bridge concept from Italian designers Francesco Colarossi, Giovanna Saracino and Luisa Saracino would seem to make a lot of sense. The proposed bridge would harness solar energy through a grid of solar cells embedded in the road surface, while wind turbines integrated into the spaces between the bridge’s pillars would be used to generate electricity from the crosswinds. Read More

Erosion through water flow (called scour) causes the majority of bridge collapses in the U.S and was responsible for the levee failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It has been difficult to assess the erosive potential of a soil profile without extensive digging on site followed up by hours of off site testing, but researchers at North Carolina State University (NCSU) have developed a device that significantly improves the process by measuring the scour and erosion potential of soils without the need to excavate and remotely test samples. Having tested the sensor in the lab the team are ready to conduct their first field tests. Read More

Luckily there aren’t many countries that drive on the opposite side of the road and share borders. However, they do exist, such as China, which drives on the right, and the former British colony of Hong Kong, and former Portuguese colony of Macau, both which drive on the left. This can pose an interesting problem for engineers and road planners, but Dutch architectural firm, NL Architects, has come up with a bridge with a twist – a concept that not only puts the drivers on the correct side of the road physically, but helps reinforce that fact visually to help get the drivers into the mindset of driving on the opposite side of the road. Read More

From mundane traffic overpasses to marvelous feats of soaring engineering, bridges are something we tend to take for granted - until something goes wrong that is. A team from the University of Michigan is leading a five-year, $19 million project to engineer an intelligent infrastructure monitoring system designed to prevent tragedies like the collapse of the Interstate 35 West bridge over the Mississippi river in 2007 in which 13 people were killed and 145 were injured. Read More

May 1, 2008 A 28 kilometer-long bridge is being planned to link the Middle East and Africa. The US$20 billion bridge will become the longest suspension bridge in the world and tower some 400 meters above the water, with at least three spans of around 2700m each. Undoubtedly set to become one of the wonders of the modern world, the project includes plans to build entire cities at each end, linked by a six-lane motorway and a four-track railway. Adding complexity to the enormous task, which is expected to take some 12 years to complete, the bridge it is to be built in an area of intense seismic activity. Read More