Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
A cable-stayed bridge is a bridge that consists of one or more pillars, with cables supporting the roadbed. There are two major classes of cable-stayed bridges, differentiated by how the cables are connected to the pillars. In a parallel attachment design, the cables are made nearly parallel by having the height of attachment on the pillar be similar to the distance from the pillar along the roadway. In a radial attachment design, the cables all connect to or pass over the top of the pillar.
The cable-stay design occupies a sweet spot of length between cantilever bridges and suspension bridges. Within this sweet spot a suspension bridge would require more cable, while a full cantilever bridge would require considerably more material.
Comparison with suspension bridge
A multiple-pillar cable-stayed bridge may appear similar to a suspension bridge, but in fact is very different in principle and in the method of construction. In the suspension bridge, a large cable is made up by "spinning" small diameter wires between two pillars, and at each end to anchorages into the ground or to a massive structure. These cables form the primary load-bearing structure for the bridge deck. Before the deck is installed, the cables are under tension from only their own weight. Smaller cables or rods are then suspended on the main cable, and used to support the load of the roadbed, which is lifted in sections and attached to the suspender cables. As this is done the tension in the cables increases, as they are also increased with the "live load" of vehicles or persons crossing the bridge. The tension on the cables must be transferred to the earth by the anchorages, which are sometimes difficult to construct due to poor soil conditions.
In the cable-stayed bridge, the pillars form the primary load-bearing structure. A cantilever approach is often used for support of the roadbed near the pillars, but areas further from them are supported by cables running directly to the pillars. This has the disadvantage, compared to the suspension bridge, that the cables pull to the sides as opposed to directly up, requiring the roadbed to be stronger to resist these loads; but has the advantage of not requiring firm anchorages to resist a horizontal pull as in the suspension bridge. All static horizontal forces are balanced so that the supporting pillar does not tend to tilt or slide, needing only to resist such forces from the "live" loads.
A further advantage of the cable-stayed bridge is that any number of pylons may be used. While it is possible to build a suspension bridge with one central tower, they are usually built with a pair of towers. Note that the apparent four-tower western segment of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is in fact a pair of two-tower suspension bridges with a massive central anchorage.
An innovative variation
The Sundial Bridge is a pedestrian bridge that uses a single cantilever spar on one side of the span, with cables on one side only to support the bridge deck.
A related bridge type
A self-supporting suspension bridge is similar in principle to the cable stayed type in that tension forces that prevent the deck from dropping are converted into compression forces vertically in the pylon and horizontally along the deck structure. Unlike a cable stayed bridge, this type must be supported by falsework during construction and so is more expensive to construct.
Examples of cable-stayed bridges
- Alex Fraser Bridge - spanning the Fraser River between Delta and Richmond in British Columbia, Canada
- Clark Bridge - spanning the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois
- Dames Point Bridge - spanning the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida
- Dongting Lake Bridge - spanning the Dongting Lake in Hunan Province, China
- Dee River Crossing (Pont Sur Y Fflint) - near Shotton, north Wales (largest asymmetric cable-stayed crossing in UK)
- Delaware 1 - spanning the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal near St. Georges, Delaware
- East End Bridge - spanning the Ohio River between Proctorville, Ohio and Huntington, West Virginia
- Fred Hartman Bridge - spanning the Houston Ship Channel between Baytown, Texas and La Porte, Texas.
- Hangzhou Bay Bridge - spanning Hangzhou Bay , off the east coast of China, between Jiaxing and Cixi . When completed, it will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world.
- Kap Shui Mun Bridge - connecting Ma Wan and Lantau Island in Hong Kong, the world's longest cable-stayed bridge carrying both road and railway traffic, with a main span of 430 metres and an overall length of 1323 metres
- Kessock bridge, Inverness, Scotland - the UK's oldest Cable-Stayed bridge, opened in 1982.
- Lune Millennium Bridge - a footbridge spanning the River Lune in Lancaster, England
- Millau Viaduct - spanning the Tarn river in France, currently the world's tallest bridge with piers at 341 m (1,118 ft) and roadway at 270 m (886 ft)
- Oresund Bridge - spanning Oresund between Denmark and Sweden
- Pont de Normandie' - spanning River Seine between Honfleur and Le Havre, northern France
- Queen Elizabeth II Bridge - spanning River Thames at Dartford Crossing, Kent
- Rio-Antirio bridge - spanning the Gulf of Corinth near Patra, Greece, the bridge with the longest cable-stayed section, a road bridge with four cable-stay pillars.
- Second Severn Crossing - River Severn estuary between England and Wales
- Sundial Bridge - A single spar pedestrian bridge spanning the Sacramento River in Redding, California
- Sunshine Skyway Bridge - spanning Tampa Bay between Saint Petersburg, Florida and Bradenton, Florida
- Ting Kau Bridge (connects Hong Kong International Airport to Hong Kong) 1177 m; the world's first major 4-span (3 towers) cable-stayed bridge.
- Varina-Enon Bridge crosses the James River in Virginia.
- Vasco da Gama Bridge crosses the estuary of the Tagus river in its wide part, at the North end of the city of Lisbon, Portugal.
- The West Gate Bridge - spanning the Yarra River in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge - spanning Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts
- Vidyasagar Setu( second Howrah bridge ) - spanning river Hooghly in Kolkata, India.
- A 5-span cable-stayed bridge, the Rion-Antirion Bridge, is currently under construction in Greece.
- The detailed design of the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong, a world record 1018 metres main span cable-stayed bridge has started.
- Structurae: Cable-stayed Bridges
- Cable-Stayed Bridge
- The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge web site
- Cable-stayed bridges on Bratacan
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