A Vierendeel bridge is a
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually someth ...
employing a
Vierendeel truss
A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure.
In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembla ...
, named after
Arthur Vierendeel
Arthur Vierendeel (10 April 1852 – 8 November 1940) was a civil engineer born in Leuven, Belgium. He had a career as a university professor, and civil engineer. The structure known as the Vierendeel truss is named after him.
Biography
He o ...
.
Such trusses are made up of rectangular rather than triangular frames, as are common in
bridges using pin–joints. Because of the lack of diagonal members, Vierendeel trusses employ
moment joints to resist substantial bending forces.
Owing to a lesser economy of materials and the difficulty of design before the advent of computers, this truss is rarely used in bridges outside Belgium. The form is more commonly employed in building structures where large shear walls or diagonal elements would interfere with the building's aesthetics or functionality.
The first such bridge was built in steel at
Avelgem
Avelgem (; vls, Oavelgem) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the towns of Avelgem proper, Bossuit, Kerkhove, Outrijve and Waarmaarde. On January 1, 2006, Avelgem had a total populat ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
in 1902, following development of the truss form and a method to calculate its strength in 1896 by Arthur Vierendeel. There are many more examples in Belgium, including some built in concrete, mostly designed by Vierendeel's many students from his long career as professor in
civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...
.
The city of
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains regions of Los Angeles County, California, United States. At the 2020 U.S. Census the population was 196,543, up from 191,719 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth-larges ...
has three Vierendeel truss bridges: the Geneva Street, Kenilworth Avenue, and
Glenoaks Boulevard
Glenoaks Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, which stretches some 22.4 miles as a north-south thoroughfare in Sylmar at its intersection with Foothill Boulevard to a west-east thoroughfare in Glendale before ending in the S ...
bridges, all two-lane bridges spanning 95 feet. They were built in 1937 as part of the
Verdugo Flood Control Project, the first project of the
after passage of the
Flood Control Act of 1936
The Flood Control Act of 1936, , (FCA 1936) was an Act of the United States Congress signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on 22 June 1936.[Kap Shui Mun Bridge
The Kap Shui Mun Bridge (KSMB) in Hong Kong, part of Lantau Link of Route 8, is one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world that transports both road and railway traffic, with the upper deck used for motor vehicles and the lower deck u ...]
in Hong Kong uses a Vierendeel truss. Opened in 1997, the lower deck carries both rail and traffic, with the lack of diagonal members in the cross section allowing vehicles to drive through the openings provided by the Vierendeel design.
References
Bridges in Belgium
Trusses
Truss bridges by type
{{Belgium-bridge-struct-stub