Breaking Barriers of Scale: A Concept for Extremely Long Span Bridges

For each bridge project, span length is an especially important parameter. It is a visual impression of the structure's technical efficiency and it has a considerable influence on construction costs. Simple extrapolations of rather conventional concepts usually do not lead to great progress in technological development. This is true as well for extremely long spans in bridge structures. Because today lightweight high strength materials are not yet inexpensive and cannot yet be produced in sufficient quantity, economical and practical designs for extremely long spans require unconventional structural systems. The proposed structural concept, with its relatively simple construction technique, is certainly suited for this design problem. It is suitable, not only for great spans but also for narrow bridges with shorter spans and also for long span pipeline bridges.