Bridge Engineering

Abstract

A bridge is a construction made for carrying the road traffic or other moving loads in order to pass through an obstacle or other constructions. The required passage may be for pedestrians, a road, a railway, a canal, a pipeline, etc. Obstacle can be rivers, valleys, sea channels, and other constructions, such as bridges themselves, buildings, railways, or roads. The covered bridge at Cambridge in Fig. 1.1 and a flyover bridge at Osaka in Fig. 1.2 are also typical bridges according to above definition. Bridges are important structures in modern highway and railway transportation systems, and generally serving as “lifelines” in the social infrastructure systems. Bridge engineering is a field of engineering (particularly a significant branch of structural engineering) dealing with the surveying, plan, design, analysis, construction, management, and maintenance of bridges that support or resist loads. This variety of disciplines requires knowledge of the science and engineering of natural and man-made materials, composites, metallurgy, structural mechanics, statics, dynamics, statistics, probability theory, hydraulics, and soil science, among other topics (Khan, 2010). Similar to other structural engineers (Abrar and Masood, 2014), bridge engineers must ensure that their designs satisfy given design standard, being responsible to structural safety (i.e., bridge must not deform severely or even collapse under design static or dynamic loads) and serviceability (i.e., bridge sway that may cause discomfort to the bridge users should be avoided). Bridge engineering theory is based upon modern mechanics (rational knowledge) and empirical knowledge of different construction materials and geometric structures. Bridge engineers need to make innovative and high efficient use of financial resources, construction materials, calculation, and construction technologies to achieve these objectives.