Why Do People Use Suspension Bridges

Bridges are an extremely important part of our lives. Many people use bridges as a part of their daily lives, to go to work, to school, their house, or even just to go to the grocery store. Over 120,000 vehicles and almost 7,000 people cross the Brooklyn Bridge daily. It’s important that these bridges we use are structurally sound and safe to travel on. Some of the main types of bridges that we use are arch bridges, beam bridges, truss bridges, and suspension bridges. Depending on the different needs of a certain bridge, the geography surrounding it, the weather, and it’s purpose, any of these designs can be used. In this paper I’m going to compare and contrast the different aspects of arch and suspension bridges. An arch bridge is a bridge shaped like an arch that has abutments at each end. Arch bridges are typically made out of materials like stone, reinforced concrete, steel, or brick. Brick and stone were more commonly used in the past when materials like

The stone or brick at the very top of the arch is called the keystone, and its purpose is for its weight to push down and outward on the stones around it. It takes the pressure placed on it by the load and spreads it out towards the abutments, which keeps the entire structure very rigid and strong. Unlike suspension bridges, tension doesn’t really play a big part in the design of arch bridges. Because of how all of the weight is diverted to the abutments, this design heavily depends on compression, but not tension. The design of an arch bridge is fairly simple, which is why it’s been around for such a long time. People have been building arch bridges since Roman times. The only difficulty you might face when building an arch bridge is supporting the two separate sides before they meet. Each side isn’t able to stand on its own until they meet in the middle and can support one