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 Beam: Front Street, Vancouver .jpg "Arch: Bradford on Avon UK") Arch: Bradford on Avon UK |
Books and internet pages classify bridges in many different ways - some say there are 4, some 6, some even 21 types of bridge. If that isn't confusing enough the descriptions don't necessarily help you understand how the bridges work. To read a bridge you need to know that there are basically 4 types of structural forms of which one or more occur in all bridges. The illustrations on this page were chosen because they are dominantly, but not totally, of one type. You can remember them because they are BATS B is for beams A is for arches T is for trusses and S is for suspension or hanging structures So there aren't just 4 types of bridge - or even any other number (from 1 to 100) of types of bridge. Bridges are mixtures of BATS. You can explore further on the following pages. |
 Truss: Forth Railway Bridge  Suspension: Golden Gate Bridge |
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