Saturday, April 17, 2010

California Bridges - Route 105/110 Separation (2)

We've spent the last week looking at unusual supports for freeway interchanges in California. We've studied the use of outriggers (on the 880/980/24 Interchange in Oakland), bridges on bridges (on the 5/110 Interchange in Los Angeles), and holes in bridge decks (on the 405/90 Interchange in Los Angeles). However, if we get really desperate, we can always use a C-bent like the one I designed for the 105/110 Interchange (shown in the photo).

There's no room for a column under the deck and no room for a second column on the right side of the bridge. So at this location the column is offset several feet from the center of the superstructure. These C-bents have to be designed for the large moments and shears due to the eccentric loads they carry. This is difficult for dead and live load, but it can be extremely problematic for earthquake loads.

Architects typically design a special look for freeways and interchanges. On this interchange the columns have a special shape and the outside of the barrier rails have a texture that we called fish scales (although the architect probably wasn't thinking about fishes).
Creative Commons License
California Bridges - Route 105/110 Separation (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

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