Unbreakable Bridges

Reported October 2006

BUFFALO, N.Y. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- There are nearly 600,000 bridges in the United States. Millions of people cross bridges every day without giving a second thought to their safety. But many of them could be taken down by a natural disaster like an earthquake or flooding or worse, by a terrorist attack.

"We have already seen, after Hurricane Katrina, bridges massively pushed sideways and out of their piers and, and in a very large scale," Michel Bruneau, Ph.D., a structural engineer at the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at University at Buffalo in New York, tells Ivanhoe.

He says it's time to make our bridges safer. "The best way to avoid a disaster in the first place is to have infrastructure that will not fail in a disaster."

Bridges are typically held up by reinforced concrete columns and bars. In Dr. Bruneau's new design, steel tubes are filled with concrete. The steel and concrete bind, creating strong yet supple columns. In field tests, a massive blast causes the supports to bend, but not break.

"We definitely think it provides better protection against multiple hazards," Dr. Bruneau says. "It is important to be covered against all hazards, and that is essentially the main change in philosophy that we are trying to impact here."

These multi-hazard-resistant bridges are intended for use over highways and water and can withstand fire, hurricanes and flooding.

The new piers would be used for new bridges, but Dr. Bruneau says existing bridges could also be retrofitted with the new design.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Michel Bruneau, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research
SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
(716) 645-3391 ext. 104

The American Society of Civil Engineers
Reston, Virginia 20191-4400
(800) 548-2723
http://www.asce.org

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