Thinking Outside the (Concrete) Box: Short Span Steel Bridges
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Nothing beats driving through a city, country side, or coastline and seeing a steel truss bridge gleaming in the sunlight. Unfortunately, this is a sight that becomes rarer every year. For the sake of perceived facilitation and efficiency, many of these “character” bridges have been replaced with concrete boxes. However, even when you just want to build a standard short span bridge (without visual elements), steel is more economical than concrete.
One of the biggest reasons for the growing number of concrete bridges is the simplicity in specifying them. More or less, county engineers and other specifiers could pick a “bridge in a box,” with concrete, and felt designing a steel bridge was too complex. To help combat this perception as well as the misconception that steel is less economical than concrete, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) created the Short Span Steel Bridge Alliance (SSSBA). In the past nine months, the American Galvanizers Association (AGA) has become heavily involved with the SSSBA, which is a collaborative effort of civil engineering professors, steel and bridge manufacturers, fabricators, coaters, and committed to educating county engineers and other bridge consultants of the advantages of steel bridges.
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