A Project Over Constructing A Bridge Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

A Project Over Constructing A Bridge - Essay Example Concrete and steel were the most popular choice on constructing a bridge. Other materials to use include iron, stones, wood, and plastics. The stones are useful in handling the compression forces. Wood, iron, and plastics were only to be used to support the bridge when the construction took over. Steel is more like an iron but has high strength in both tension and compression. Steel is a ductile material where it can be shaped or bent into different forms, unlike an iron that is brittle, meaning it can break suddenly. Steel also deflects or yields before failure. That was why they preferred using steel rather iron, though it is expensive.Concrete was the second relevant material that was to be used. Cement is made of limestone and clay. Cement is a component required in making the concrete. Cement was mixed with water, and the aggregate comprising coarse and fine aggregates and hardened to a mass called concrete. The concrete is a versatile material and was easily shaped into differe nt forms of the bridge setup. The concrete was not made very strong in compression because it would very weak in tension; instead, the steel was embedded into the concrete to handle the tensile forces. The mixture of concrete with embedded steel was referred to as the reinforced concrete. Typical material properties that were usedThe structural engineers used material properties when they were designing bridge members. They considered the stress, strain, Young’s modulus and compressive strength of the material.