Bio-inspired Bridge Design - Biotechnologies and Biomimetics for Civil Engineering - page 239

Fig. 10.7 Environmental-friendly bridge proposals: a Newcastle Botanic bridge (photo Wilkin-
son Eyre Architects); b ''Windy'' design (photo Francesco Colarossi Architecture)
natural world. Figure 10.8 exhibits Paddington Rolling Bridge with a span of
12.9 m, which has served both pedestrians and the channel in an interesting way.
Although designers may not have completely agreed with the statement that
structural form is like a rolling insect, its shape and structural principle coincides
with the biological creature. If engineers can try to invite kinematic principles
from nature during the conceptual design phase, mechanisms for guiding move-
ments in movable bridges may be better defined. One example (Fig. 10.9 ) is the
Gateshead Millennium Bridge in Newcastle, UK. The designers adopted an
unconventional open mode to adapt to channel traffic in the Tyne River. Another
example in Fig. 10.10 is the Keil-Horn Folding Bridge with a remarkable trailing
design case where three segments are held by cables when it opens for channel
traffic.
Some interesting topics on the development of movable bridges includes the
use of deployable form (Alegria Mira et al. 2014 ; Friedman and Ibrahimbegovic
2013 ; Russell and Thrall 2013 ; Thrall et al. 2012 ) and tensegrity form (Korkmaz
et al. 2012 ; Rhode-Barbarigos et al. 2010 ).