bridge inquiry golden gate bridge

about the bridge

• total length 8,981 ft
• width 90 ft
• height 746 ft
• the bridge is crossed by 140 million people every year

About the bridge

• official name is Golden Gate Bridge
• the designers are Joseph Strauss, Irving Morrow, and Charles Ellis
• the cables are made up of 80,160 miles of wire enough to go around the wourld 3 times!

About the bridge

• the bridge has 6 lanes of highway (101 1)
• located in San Francisco
• it is a suspension bridge
• it holds 887,030 tons

About the bridge

• there were many movies shot with the bridge in it.
• workers started removing the bridges paint in 1965 to put more modern paint on.

what is a suspension bridge

• it is a bridge that is made up of cables which holds the deck in place.

how it Could have collapsed

• the highway on the Oakland Bay San Francisco Bridge collapsed in 1989 because of an earthquake.
• 63 people died
• if the epicenter were closer to Golden Gate Bridge it would have had a major failure

seismic retrofit

• consultants did a vulnerability study of the bridge.
• they concluded that an earthquake of 7.0 or greater would cause severe damage.
• they did a seismic retrofit of the bridge to fix it

how they fixed it

• the retrofit started in 1997 and is still not finished
• they fixed concrete supports and road deck and many other things.

bibliography

• HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/GOLDEN_GATE_BRIDGE
• book?
• http://goldengatebridge.org/projects/retrofit.php