Civil Engineering Photos

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Featured today is a bascule bridge, often called a drawbridge, which carries rail traffic over the Rogue River near Detroit, Michigan. A bascule bridge allows the operators to lift the main span out of the way of the river when large ships need to gain access upstream. The bridge works by using a large counterweight to displace the weight of the span. The use of a counterweight allows for relatively easy opening and closing because less energy is needed per motion than if the motors of the bridge needed to raise and lower the total weight of the bridge all by themselves.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

This is a classic example of a steel railroad bridge. This bridge is constructed of built up members of steel and is simply supported. Look closely on the left side of the span and an actual hinge can be seen. This hinge allows the span to rotate freely, but will inhibit any vertical and translational motion. Simply supported beams allow for a simplified analysis as well as very predictable behavior under loading conditions.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

This is the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, officially the Houghton–Hancock Bridge, in Houghton, Michigan. This bridge connects the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Keweenaw Peninsula, which today is technically the Keweenaw Island due to a man made shipping canal. The lift bridge is the widest and heaviest double-decked lift bridge in the world, capable of elevating to a water clearance height of 100 feet!

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

This is the I-94, Telegraph Road Bridge near Detroit, Michigan. This seemly out of place bridge is needed to span over Telegraph road to allow for unobstructed traffic flow beneath I-94. This bridge uses a combination of steel arches and tension cables to carry the load of the deck and passing traffic. The road deck takes load to the cables, which are hung from the steel arches. These steel arches then finish the load path by bringing the load to the ground. If you look on the right side of the picture, the top of the foundation of the bridge can be seen where the blue arch contacts the ground.

Photo Credit: Karl Jansen

Pictured here is the Mackinaw Bridge, which connects the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Lower Peninsula. This suspension bridge was finished in 1957, boasting a length of 26,372 feet (4.99 miles) and a longest span of 3,800 feet. Suspension bridges are unique in the way the loads of the bridge are transferred to the ground. The cables of a suspension bridge work in tension, carrying the loads to the two towers which work in compression against the foundations on the earth. The cable ends are then secured in massive blocks of concrete that hold the tension in the cables completing the load path.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Featured above is a classic single span concrete bridge over a small river. The river is a minor branch of the Muskegon River in Muskegon, Michigan close to where it enters Muskegon Lake. Over the course of the lumber boom of the 1800’s this river carried billions of board feet of lumber from the interior regions of the state to the saw mills on the coast of Lake Michigan. These logs were in turn sawed into lumber and used to build homes, buildings, and other timber structures.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

Seen here is a railroad bridge that crosses a busy highway in Muskegon, Michigan. Although seldom thought about by the general public, without bridges like this one the transportation infrastructure that makes up American would be much less efficient. Image having to stop at an intersection like this one for a train while driving 70 MPH on the freeway!

Photo Credit: Nathan Shoemaker

Seen here is a night photograph of the I-196 crossing of the Grand River in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This highway is a major artery through the city and carries many cars and trucks from the west coast of Michigan to the metropolitan area of Detroit via Grand Rapids.

Photo Credit: Alex Mead

The bridge you are looking at is a purely pedestrian bridge for crossing the Grand River. As is obvious by the snow on the ground and ice build up near the piers this photograph was taken in the winter. Bridges like this one must therefore be very resilient against the forces of not only the water flowing in the river but also against the destructive forces of ice.