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This unique bicycle/pedestrian bridge is the worlds longest stress-ribbon bridge. The stress-ribbon bridge is a type of suspension bridge with cables embedded in an ultra-thin concrete deck. This type of bridge is rare, with only six examples in North America and fewer than 50 worldwide. The stress-ribbon type was selected to minimize environmental impacts and because it works well aesthetically in both wet and dry lake conditions. Since the superstructure was constructed of precast concrete ...

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This Colorado ramp flyover bridge is unique both for its use of state-of-the-art curved precast concrete girders and for the difficult, busy traffic thoroughfares over which it was built. All traffic crossings were high-volume roadways that required night and weekend erection and lane closures. The bridge currently has the longest span using constant-depth precast U-girder construction in Colorado. It employs a number of innovations and refinements of this type of construction, which ...

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This affordable-housing project endeavors to bring a safe, quiet environment to its tenants while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of sustainability. The five-story, all-precast concrete structure includes 63 units, ranging from 620 ft2 one-bedroom apartments to 1355 ft2 three-bedrooms. Precast concrete was the construction material of choice because of its speed of erection, minimal air infiltration, durability, decreased material waste, and inherent green building properties. Because ...

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The Aviation Rescue Swimmer School allows the Navy to consolidate its entire rescue training functions into a single modern precast facility. Characteristics of a Navy training pool that differentiate it from a typical pool include the ability to house two open parachutes and the ability to simulate the environmental effects produced by a helicopter water landing. Unfortunately, this simulation creates an environment that is highly corrosive and can contribute to mold growth. Precast ...

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To meet increased local demand, the Andrew Carnegie library needed both a renovation and an expansion. Key challenges of the project included alleviating the original library's deficiencies in space, demand, and street parking. The new building achieved all of these programmatic objectives while also complementing the original librarys classical 1902 design. Many features of the original historic building were carved out of limestone. Because the cost of constructing new limestone would have ...

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This 4.2-mi-long precast concrete segmental bridge was designed to complete the 20-mi-long light-rail mass-transit system connecting the Boeing airfield to the City of Seattle Airport. This projects light-rail alignment faced significant technical challenges, including the minimization of disturbance to major crossing thoroughfares, a large rail yard, and environmentally sensitive waterways. Further complicating the project is the high seismic zone in which it is located. Additionally, this ...

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This bridge is located in a remote mountain area where a landslide had eliminated the roadway linking a resort town with a major metropolitan area in March 2005. The California Department of Transportation wrestled with various solutions that were complicated by the active nature of the slide. Efforts to stabilize the mass of rock proved ineffective and therefore the only logical solution was to place the abutments on stable soil comfortably outside the slide limits. This decision meant that ...

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In 2001, it was decided that the time had come to think about replacing the Route 70 Manaquan River Bridge. The original bridge had become structurally deficient and functionally obsolete since its original construction in 1936. Following an increase in both vertical under-clearance bridge height and navigation-channel width—both decisions resulting from a navigation survey—and the results of an environmental impact study, the use of steel girders for the new bridge was effectively ruled out ...

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Breaking new ground, this bridge was the first in North America to be built with a new generation of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) pi-girders, the first North American highway bridge project to incorporate batching of UHPC in a ready-mix truck, and the third highway bridge project in North America to be built with UHPC girders. The UHPC girders themselves provide a superior combination of properties, including compressive strengths up to 30000 psi, flexural strength up to 6000 psi ...

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Since the 1920 erection of this historic concrete tied arch bridge, degradation had set in and slowly lowered the maximum allowable load to a low of 5 tons. In 2005, Rettew Engineering was hired to design a replacement structure. Maintaining the aesthetic and the contextual sensitivity of the original bridge was of the utmost importance in the new design. In addition to this was the necessity to meet new loading, flooding, sight, and safety constraints. The most difficult of these additional ...

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