Shell supported curved footbridges

Since the construction of Maillart’s curved bridges, the improved building technologies of structural concrete and steel work led the designers to face the problem of realizing different typologies of curved bridges. Particularly, for about two decades across the year 2000, Jörg Schlaich gave us his fundamental contribute to the design of suspended and cablestayed curved bridges. He developed different typologies of curved bridges made of steel, with also using prestressing. Another fundamental contribution to innovation in bridge design came from Musmeci’s work between the ‘50s and 70’s of the past century. He studied some amazing shell supported bridges made of concrete with shell surface of minimal area, finally designing his pioneering masterpiece, the Basento Bridge in Potenza, whose design and construction lasted from 1968 to 1976. Taking account of Musmeci’s work on shell bridges and of Sclaich’s studies on curved bridges, in this paper a curved footbridge supported by an anticlastic concrete shell with minimal area is studied. The influence of boundary conditions on the bridge shape, the advantages of supporting the deck by only one side and of prestressing the longitudinal ring girder are illustrated.