An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch . Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side, and partially into a vertical load on the arch supports. A viaduct (a long bridge) may be made from a series of arches, although other more economical structures are typically used today.
33-517: The Vista Bridge (officially, Vista Avenue Viaduct ) is an arch bridge for vehicles and pedestrians located in Portland, Oregon , United States . It connects the areas of King's Hill and Vista Ridge (the entire southern hillside is also referred to as Portland Heights ) which are both in the Goose Hollow neighborhood. The MAX Light Rail line and Jefferson Street/Canyon Road travel under
66-512: A deck arch bridge. Any part supported from arch below may have spandrels that are closed or open. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Bayonne Bridge are a through arch bridge which uses a truss type arch. Also known as a bowstring arch, this type of arch bridge incorporates a tie between two opposite ends of the arch. The tie is usually the deck and is capable of withstanding the horizontal thrust forces which would normally be exerted on
99-462: A greater passage for flood waters. Bridges with perforated spandrels can be found worldwide, such as in China ( Zhaozhou Bridge , 7th century). Greece ( Bridge of Arta , 17th century) and Wales ( Cenarth Bridge , 18th century). In more modern times, stone and brick arches continued to be built by many civil engineers, including Thomas Telford , Isambard Kingdom Brunel and John Rennie . A key pioneer
132-447: A number were segmental arch bridges (such as Alconétar Bridge ), a bridge which has a curved arch that is less than a semicircle. The advantages of the segmental arch bridge were that it allowed great amounts of flood water to pass under it, which would prevent the bridge from being swept away during floods and the bridge itself could be more lightweight. Generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones ( voussoirs ) of
165-448: A quantity of fill material (typically compacted rubble) above the arch in order to increase this dead-weight on the bridge and prevent tension from occurring in the arch ring as loads move across the bridge. Other materials that were used to build this type of bridge were brick and unreinforced concrete. When masonry (cut stone) is used the angles of the faces are cut to minimize shear forces. Where random masonry (uncut and unprepared stones)
198-415: A result, masonry arch bridges are designed to be constantly under compression, so far as is possible. Each arch is constructed over a temporary falsework frame, known as a centring . In the first compression arch bridges, a keystone in the middle of the bridge bore the weight of the rest of the bridge. The more weight that was put onto the bridge, the stronger its structure became. Masonry arch bridges use
231-430: A three-hinged bridge has hinged in all three locations. Most modern arch bridges are made from reinforced concrete . This type of bridge is suitable where a temporary centring may be erected to support the forms, reinforcing steel, and uncured concrete. When the concrete is sufficiently set the forms and falseworks are then removed. It is also possible to construct a reinforced concrete arch from precast concrete , where
264-428: Is a masonry, or stone, bridge where each successively higher course (layer) cantilevers slightly more than the previous course. The steps of the masonry may be trimmed to make the arch have a rounded shape. The corbel arch does not produce thrust, or outward pressure at the bottom of the arch, and is not considered a true arch . It is more stable than a true arch because it does not have this thrust. The disadvantage
297-573: Is still used by the local populace. The well-preserved Hellenistic Eleutherna Bridge has a triangular corbel arch. The 4th century BC Rhodes Footbridge rests on an early voussoir arch. Although true arches were already known by the Etruscans and ancient Greeks , the Romans were – as with the vault and the dome – the first to fully realize the potential of arches for bridge construction. A list of Roman bridges compiled by
330-432: Is that this type of arch is not suitable for large spans. In some locations it is necessary to span a wide gap at a relatively high elevation, such as when a canal or water supply must span a valley. Rather than building extremely large arches, or very tall supporting columns (difficult using stone), a series of arched structures are built one atop another, with wider structures at the base. Roman civil engineers developed
363-402: Is used they are mortared together and the mortar is allowed to set before the falsework is removed. Traditional masonry arches are generally durable, and somewhat resistant to settlement or undermining. However, relative to modern alternatives, such bridges are very heavy, requiring extensive foundations . They are also expensive to build wherever labor costs are high. The corbel arch bridge
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#1732780494530396-549: The Vista Avenue Viaduct , on April 26, 1984. The Ford Street Bridge, a previous bridge on this site, was built in 1903 as part of a streetcar route to Council Crest , the highest point in Portland at 1,070 feet. Council Crest was the site of the "Big Tree Observatory" (built for the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition) and a popular amusement park and dance hall that operated from 1907 to 1929. Streetcars crossed
429-809: The Portland Transportation Bureau to erect temporary suicide barriers. Because of its status on the National Register of Historic Places the bridge's barrier had to be approved by the Preservation Society under the National Historic Preservation Act and by the State Historic Preservation Office and any federal and state agencies that provide funding. Following the erection of a suicide barrier in
462-663: The Vista Bridge and the Goose Hollow/SW Jefferson St (MAX station) . In 2010, the title shot for Portlandia was photographed from the Vista Bridge. The bridge has been a popular place for jumpers , with the first incident possibly occurring five years after its 1926 opening, earning it the nickname "Suicide Bridge". From 2004 through 2011, 13 people died by suicide by jumping. In July 2013, following three fatal jumps in six months, Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick approved an emergency request by
495-436: The abutments of an arch bridge. The deck is suspended from the arch. The arch is in compression, in contrast to a suspension bridge where the catenary is in tension. A tied-arch bridge can also be a through arch bridge. An arch bridge with hinges incorporated to allow movement between structural elements. A single-hinged bridge has a hinge at the crown of the arch , a two-hinged bridge has hinges at both springing points and
528-793: The acclaimed Florentine segmental arch bridge Ponte Vecchio (1345) combined sound engineering (span-to-rise ratio of over 5.3 to 1) with aesthetical appeal. The three elegant arches of the Renaissance Ponte Santa Trinita (1569) constitute the oldest elliptic arch bridge worldwide. Such low rising structures required massive abutments , which at the Venetian Rialto bridge and the Fleischbrücke in Nuremberg (span-to-rise ratio 6.4:1) were founded on thousands of wooden piles, partly rammed obliquely into
561-416: The arch and the deck is known as the spandrel . If the spandrel is solid, usually the case in a masonry or stone arch bridge, the bridge is called a closed-spandrel deck arch bridge . If the deck is supported by a number of vertical columns rising from the arch, the bridge is known as an open-spandrel deck arch bridge . The Alexander Hamilton Bridge is an example of an open-spandrel arch bridge. Finally, if
594-400: The arch is built in two halves which are then leaned against each other. Many modern bridges, made of steel or reinforced concrete, often bear some of their load by tension within their structure. This reduces or eliminates the horizontal thrust against the abutments and allows their construction on weaker ground. Structurally and analytically they are not true arches but rather a beam with
627-422: The arch supports the deck only at the top of the arch, the bridge is called a cathedral arch bridge . This type of bridge has an arch whose base is at or below the deck, but whose top rises above it, so the deck passes through the arch. The central part of the deck is supported by the arch via suspension cables or tie bars, as with a tied-arch bridge . The ends of the bridge may be supported from below, as with
660-625: The bridge an unusually flat profile unsurpassed for more than a millennium. Trajan's bridge over the Danube featured open- spandrel segmental arches made of wood (standing on 40 m-high (130 ft) concrete piers). This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m-long (2,590 ft) long Puente Romano at Mérida . The late Roman Karamagara Bridge in Cappadocia may represent
693-508: The bridge, and Vista Avenue crosses the bridge. The ravine the Vista Bridge passes over was carved out by Tanner Creek and is referred to as the Tanner Creek Canyon (the source of the name for Canyon Road ), which was called "The Great Plank Road". Tanner Creek was diverted underground beginning in the 1870s with work completed in the early 1900s. The creek still runs underground beneath the Vista Bridge, although it now drains
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#1732780494530726-603: The current bridge until 1950, when service on the Council Crest line (and the only other two then-remaining urban streetcar lines) was abandoned, but the disused tracks remained in place on the bridge for another four decades, until a renovation of the bridge deck. In 1991, several bungee jumps were filmed here for an Oregon Lottery advertisement. Opening scenes for the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!? were filmed in Goose Hollow and included views of
759-414: The design and constructed highly refined structures using only simple materials, equipment, and mathematics. This type is still used in canal viaducts and roadways as it has a pleasing shape, particularly when spanning water, as the reflections of the arches form a visual impression of circles or ellipses. This type of bridge comprises an arch where the deck is completely above the arch. The area between
792-554: The earliest surviving bridge featuring a pointed arch. In medieval Europe, bridge builders improved on the Roman structures by using narrower piers , thinner arch barrels and higher span-to-rise ratios on bridges. Gothic pointed arches were also introduced, reducing lateral thrust, and spans increased as with the eccentric Puente del Diablo (1282). The 14th century in particular saw bridge building reaching new heights. Span lengths of 40 m (130 ft), previously unheard of in
825-484: The engineer Colin O'Connor features 330 Roman stone bridges for traffic, 34 Roman timber bridges and 54 Roman aqueduct bridges , a substantial part still standing and even used to carry vehicles. A more complete survey by the Italian scholar Vittorio Galliazzo found 931 Roman bridges, mostly of stone, in as many as 26 countries (including former Yugoslavia ). Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular , although
858-619: The fall of 2013, as a result of protest on the behalf of local residents, a would-be jumper managed to get around the barrier but was talked down by police; in January 2014, a 14-year-old boy shot and killed himself on the bridge, tumbling onto the adjacent embankment. Arch bridge Possibly the oldest existing arch bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko Bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch bridge
891-499: The grounds to counteract more effectively the lateral thrust. In China, the oldest existing arch bridge is the Zhaozhou Bridge of 605 AD, which combined a very low span-to-rise ratio of 5.2:1, with the use of spandrel arches (buttressed with iron brackets). The Zhaozhou Bridge, with a length of 167 feet (51 m) and span of 123 feet (37 m), is the world's first wholly stone open-spandrel segmental arch bridge, allowing
924-443: The history of masonry arch construction, were now reached in places as diverse as Spain ( Puente de San Martín ), Italy ( Castelvecchio Bridge ) and France ( Devil's bridge and Pont Grand ) and with arch types as different as semi-circular, pointed and segmental arches. The bridge at Trezzo sull'Adda , destroyed in the 15th century, even featured a span length of 72 m (236 ft), not matched until 1796. Constructions such as
957-479: The only ones to construct bridges with concrete , which they called Opus caementicium . The outside was usually covered with brick or ashlar , as in the Alcántara Bridge . The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction. The 330 m-long (1,080 ft) Limyra Bridge in southwestern Turkey features 26 segmental arches with an average span-to-rise ratio of 5.3:1, giving
990-639: The same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts , such as the Pont du Gard and Segovia Aqueduct . Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e.g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome (62 BC), one of the world's oldest major bridges still standing. Roman engineers were the first and until the Industrial Revolution
1023-455: The shape of an arch. See truss arch bridge for more on this type. A modern evolution of the arch bridge is the long-span through arch bridge . This has been made possible by the use of light materials that are strong in tension such as steel and prestressed concrete. "The Romans were the first builders in Europe, perhaps the first in the world, fully to appreciate the advantages of the arch,
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1056-577: The surrounding hillside via storm drains and a culvert to the Willamette River . The bridge has four pedestrian balconies, or "refuge bays" (extensions outward from the sidewalk), holding concrete benches, two on each side. The 248-foot-long (76 m) structure was designed by architect Fred T. Fowler. It is of a rib-reinforced concrete deck arch design. Completed in 1926, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places , as
1089-402: Was Jean-Rodolphe Perronet , who used much narrower piers, revised calculation methods and exceptionally low span-to-rise ratios. Different materials, such as cast iron , steel and concrete have been increasingly used in the construction of arch bridges. Stone, brick and other such materials are strong in compression and somewhat so in shear , but cannot resist much force in tension . As
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