Tag: Federal Highway Administration

What Is Bridge Scour? Why Should You Care?

The most common cause of bridge failures is from floods scouring bed material surrounding bridge foundations. What is scour? Simply put, scour is the engineering term for the erosion of soil surrounding a bridge foundation (piers and abutments). Bridge scour occurs when fast-moving water around a bridge removes sediment from… Read More »

How Much Weight is Too Much for a Bridge? Engineers’ Ratings Have the Answer

In mid-May of 2018 a driver crossing a bridge in the Town of Lafayette in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, noticed something was wrong with the bridge. Town officials quickly saw the problem – the bridge had a major crack in the deck, and a pier pile holding up the bridge had buckled, causing the bridge to… Read More »

Taking Notice: Is that a Bridge or a Culvert?

Drivers intent on getting from Point A to Point B probably don’t notice how many times their vehicles travel over culverts and bridges along the route. And that’s good: unless the structures are designed to capture attention and add to the scenery, bridges and culverts are purely functional, allowing traffic to pass over ravines, bodies of water, roadways, railroad… Read More »