Cantilever bridge

A cantilever bridge is a bridge built using structures that project horizontally into space, supported on only one end (called cantilevers). For small footbridges, the cantilevers may be simple beams; however, large cantilever bridges designed to handle road or rail traffic use trusses built from structural steel, or box girders built from prestressed concrete.

Cantilever bridge

The Pierre Pflimlin Bridge is a balanced cantilever made of concrete, shown here under construction.
Ancestor	Beam bridge, truss bridge
Related	None
Descendant	Swing bridge
Carries	Pedestrians, automobiles, trucks, light rail, heavy rail
Span range	Medium
Material	Iron, structural steel, prestressed concrete
Movable	No
Design effort	Medium
Falsework required	Very little to none

The steel truss cantilever bridge was a major engineering breakthrough when first put into practice, as it can span distances of over 1,500 feet (450 m), and can be more easily constructed at difficult crossings by virtue of using little or no falsework.

Origins

The original style of cantilever bridge

Engineers in the 19th century understood that a bridge that was continuous across multiple supports would distribute the loads among them. This would result in lower stresses in the girder or truss and meant that longer spans could be built. Several 19th-century engineers patented continuous bridges with hinge points mid-span. The use of a hinge in the multi-span system presented the advantages of a statically determinate system and of a bridge that could handle differential settlement of the foundations. Engineers could more easily calculate the forces and stresses with a hinge in the girder.

Heinrich Gerber was one of the engineers to obtain a patent for a hinged girder (1866) and is recognized as the first to build one. The Hassfurt Bridge over the Main river in Germany with a central span of 124 feet (38 metres) was completed in 1867 and is recognized as the first modern cantilever bridge.

The structural principles of the suspended span cantilever bridge

The High Bridge of Kentucky by C. Shaler Smith (1877), the Niagara Cantilever Bridge by Charles Conrad Schneider (1883) and the Poughkeepsie Bridge by John Francis O'Rourke and Pomeroy P. Dickinson (1889) were all important early uses of the cantilever design. The Kentucky River Bridge spanned a gorge that was 275 feet (84 metres) deep and took full advantage of the fact that falsework, or temporary support, is not needed for the main span of a cantilever bridge.

The Forth Bridge is a notable example of an early cantilever bridge. This bridge held the record for longest span in the world for twenty-nine years until it was surpassed by the Quebec Bridge. The engineers responsible for the bridge, Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Fowler, demonstrated the structural principles of the suspended span cantilever by sitting in chairs and supporting their colleague, Kaichi Watanabe, in between them, using just their arms and wooden poles. The suspended span, where Watanabe sits, is in the center. The wooden poles resist the compression of the lower chord, while the outstretched arms support the tension of the upper chord. The placement of the brick counterweights demonstrates the action of the outer foundations.

Function

Cantilever Bridge.—A structure at least one portion of which acts as an anchorage for sustaining another portion which extends beyond the supporting pier.

— John Alexander Low Waddell, Bridge Engineering

A simple cantilever span is formed by two cantilever arms extending from opposite sides of an obstacle to be crossed, meeting at the center. In a common variant, the suspended span, the cantilever arms do not meet in the center; instead, they support a central truss bridge which rests on the ends of the cantilever arms. The suspended span may be built off-site and lifted into place, or constructed in place using special travelling supports.

A diagram of the parts of the John P. Grace Memorial Bridge

A common way to construct steel truss and prestressed concrete cantilever spans is to counterbalance each cantilever arm with another cantilever arm projecting the opposite direction, forming a balanced cantilever; when they attach to a solid foundation, the counterbalancing arms are called anchor arms. Thus, in a bridge built on two foundation piers, there are four cantilever arms: two which span the obstacle, and two anchor arms that extend away from the obstacle. Because of the need for more strength at the balanced cantilever's supports, the bridge superstructure often takes the form of towers above the foundation piers. The Commodore Barry Bridge is an example of this type of cantilever bridge.

Steel truss cantilevers support loads by tension of the upper members and compression of the lower ones. Commonly, the structure distributes the tension via the anchor arms to the outermost supports, while the compression is carried to the foundations beneath the central towers. Many truss cantilever bridges use pinned joints and are therefore statically determinate with no members carrying mixed loads.

Prestressed concrete balanced cantilever bridges are often built using segmental construction.

Construction methods

Some steel arch bridges (such as the Navajo Bridge) are built using pure cantilever spans from each side, with neither falsework below nor temporary supporting towers and cables above. These are then joined with a pin, usually after forcing the union point apart, and when jacks are removed and the bridge decking is added the bridge becomes a truss arch bridge. Such unsupported construction is only possible where appropriate rock is available to support the tension in the upper chord of the span during construction, usually limiting this method to the spanning of narrow canyons.

The old eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, pictured in August 2014, is deconstructed in an order nearly reverse that of its construction. Similar temporary supports were used under each anchor arm during the bridge's construction.

List by length

Main articles: List of longest cantilever bridges and List of cantilever bridges

World's longest cantilever bridges (by longest span):

No	Bridge	Location	Country	Date	Length
1	Quebec Bridge	Quebec	Canada	1919	1,800 ft (549 m)
2	Forth Bridge	Firth of Forth	Scotland	1890	1,710 ft (521 m) × 2
3	Minato Bridge	Osaka	Japan	1973	1,673 ft (510 m)
4	Commodore Barry Bridge	Chester, Pennsylvania	United States	1974	1,644 ft (501 m)
5	Crescent City Connection (dual spans)	New Orleans, Louisiana	United States	1958 & 1988	1,575 ft (480 m)
6	Howrah Bridge	Kolkata, West Bengal	India	1943	1,500 ft (457 m)
7	Gramercy Bridge	Gramercy, Louisiana	United States	1995	1,460 ft (445 m)
8	Tokyo Gate Bridge	Tokyo	Japan	2012	1,443 ft (440 m)
9	J. C. Van Horne Bridge	Campbellton, New Brunswick & Pointe-à-la-Croix, Quebec	Canada	1961	1,247 ft (380 m)
10	Horace Wilkinson Bridge	Baton Rouge, Louisiana	United States	1968	1,235 ft (376 m)
11	Tappan Zee Bridge	South Nyack, New York & Tarrytown, New York	United States	1955	1,212 ft (369 m)
12	Lewis and Clark Bridge	Longview, Washington & Rainier, Oregon	United States	1930	1,200 ft (366 m)

Examples

• 
  The Quebec Bridge is of the general structure described above.
• 
  The Vejle Fjord Bridge is a concrete bridge built using the balanced cantilever method.
• 
  Former eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
• 
  Howrah Bridge, Kolkata
• 
  The Forth Bridge with its three double cantilevers.
• 
  Original 1938 span of the Blue Water Bridge
• 
  Pulaski Skyway
• 
  Vrengen Bridge, a concrete bridge.

External links

• "Cantilever Bridge" by Sándor Kabai, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project, 2007.
• Biggest of Finished Girders Go Traveling: six giants of 70 tons gave engineers a hard nut to crack, Popular Science monthly, February 1919, page 79, Scanned by Google Books
• "Bridge, Cantilever" . The New Student's Reference Work . 1914.

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