Designing a Movable Bridge with Glass Structural Elements

Conservation of natural environment and historical areas, declining the environmental impact and aesthetic appearance are the most important issues in modern architecture especially in designing large structures such as bridges. Glass is the material that gives the opportunity for designing a transparent structure which may meet the aforementioned requirements. My initial concept was designing a structure which allows maximum transparency and not detracts people’s view of the space. In addition, glass can be used for constructing the structure because of its notable compression strength, elasticity and stiffness (young’s modulus of around 70 GPa), its durability and versatility, elegancy and transparency. However, structural applications of glass are restricted due to some deficiencies such as intrinsic brittleness and manufacturing limitations. Therefore, glass is usually associated with load-bearing skeletons usually made of metals or polymers. What is more, bridge may be the best example of engineering and structural physics which has notable role in our social life. Nowadays due to major breakthrough in the field of glass, glass has been used for constructing the bridges but regardless of having remarkable transparent structure, their load bearing capacities are again assigned to a traditional steel work. It means that using glass in a safe primary or secondary structure which still demonstrates that glass is a fragile and dangerous material. However, it is possible to exploit glass with its unique structural behavior in a safe structural component, utilize its undoubtable beauty and offer the excellent space quality. So, in that case heavy steel supports and strong aluminum systems are replaced by glass beams and columns which lead to more structural integrity of bridge and give spectacular view to the water. This project is designing a movable glass bridge which is covering the mentioned purposes and may lead to more investigation about the movable load bearing glass structure in the future.