PROJEST OF A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE WITH A COMBINED FUNICULAR GLASS ARCH – DEPRESSED STEEL ARCH STRUCTURE
The human yearning to make up for the lack of wings to fly over hindrances and win gravity has pursued towards the construction of flying machines or more and more evanescent and ethereal constructions.
The project of a most transparent footbridge, therefore made of glass, belongs to the second category.
The inspiring constructive idea is once more that to induce compression stresses in glass and at the same time to avoid tension stresses.
From these initial requisites is conceived a static scheme where are combined in parallel two arches: the first one is a funicular arch entirely made of glass, the second one is a very depressed stainless steel arch.
The two arches are connected by means of glass struts and steel tendons in such a way to satisfy the principles of Fail Safe Design: if one of the glass components fails, the structure modifies its static scheme mobilizing post breakage resources that prevent the collapse of the entire construction.
The project has been entirely engineered within a Tesi di Laurea Magistrale in Ingegneria delle Costruzioni Civili (Candidate: Massimiliano Poli, Relators: Prof. Ing. Maurizio Froli, Dott.Ing. Gerardo Masiello, Year 2009).