Excerpt from A Treatise on Bracing With Its Application to Bridges and Other Structures of Wood or Iron: With 156 Illustrations on Stone

It is now several years since the description of bracing chiefly dwelt upon in the following pages suggested itself to the author, and he was surprised to find that a method of such simplicity and evident excellence should have been employed in only a few important instances, and in the majority of these, in a mixed or not very evident way. This naturally led him to investigate its qualifications, and it was his expectation to have had opportunities, in the exercise of his profession, of making practical use and exemplification of the results.

The first example that is likely to occur to the reader is that of the spandrils of Southwark Bridge, but the arch, from its construction and depth of material, is quite independent of additional bracing, and the use of the lozenges of the spandrils is merely to connect the arch with the roadway, thus, the Sunderland Bridge, which is of nearly the same span and of greater rise, and composed of voussoirs of less depth and inferior character for rigidity, is, nevertheless, without spandril-bracing.

A design somewhat similar to the above, represented by Figure 19, is sometimes used for engine-shafts, etc., and its bracing power is, in such cases, brought into action.

Another, and, though insignificant, seemingly a very clear application of the method is that employed to brace the transverse pipes between the main chains of the Menai Bridge.

But the most decided case of its employment, in its simplest form, which the author has met with is that figured in the March part of "The Builder" of the year 1850 (page 100, Vol. VIII.), it is the wrought-iron roof over the Strasburg Railway Station at Paris.

Town's Lattice Bridge depends, no doubt, for its strength upon the method, but presents an example of it in a very compound state, and which might have been adopted without a knowledge of the efficiency of the method in its simplest form. (Figure 22.)

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