Types of Bridges

Have you ever seen a bridge and thought, ” wow this bridge looks so cool”. Well, there are many bridges in this world and was engineering can group them is by the type of bridge they are.

The first bridge is an Arch bridge, they are constructed using brick, stone, and concrete. Arch bridges typically use one or more arches as the structural support and they are positioned beneath the deck.  The advantages of its are that it has high levels of strength and resistance due to the arches, it has a great span compared to beam bridges and it can be constructed from different materials. They date back to thousands of years ago they are one of the most effective bridge structures.

The next type of bridge is a beam bridge. It is the most common bridge form and it carries vertical loads by bending.  When the bridge bends it goes through horizontal compression at the top and at the exact time the bottom of the beam is put through horizontal tension. The support carry the loads/weight from the beam by compression vertically to the foundation of the bridge.

The last form of a bridge is the truss bridge, It is similar to a simply supported bridge because it carries vertical loads by bending. Truss bridges also give a stable form, capable of supporting considerable external loads over a large span. They are relatively popular because they use a small amount of material to carry huge loads.