The ABCDs of Bridge Building: Affordable, Beautiful, Constructable and Durable - Lichtenstein Distinguished Lecture

The ABCDs of Bridge Building: Affordable, Beautiful, Constructable, and Durable

The interrelation of aesthetics with overall bridge design, construction, and maintenance is presented. Beauty is highly desirable, but aesthetics must always be balanced with consideration of efficiency, constructability, and attention to durability. Examples show that great beauty is completely compatible with efficient, fast construction techniques and that beauty is greatly degraded if proper detailing is not provided for durability and control of staining. Rapid construction techniques are important and valuable, and they can be completely compatible with enhanced aesthetics and environmental sensitivity. A case study examines two attractive but different structural systems that were designed with different intents for blending with their surroundings. They differed in initial cost by a factor of 10, and the higher-cost structure also will require more intensive maintenance to preserve its appearance. The enigma of deciding “What price beauty?” is clearly illustrated in this comparison but can not be definitely answered because of the societal and political factors involved.

Speaker: Dr. John E. Breen
Nasser I Al Rashid Chair in Civil Engineering
University of Texas at Austin

John Breen attended Marquette University as a civil engineering student in a NROTC program. He briefly attended OSU in 1951 as part of the Navy CEC program. He graduated from Marquette in 1953. In 1957 he received a M.S. from the University of Missouri, Columbia and served on the faculty there until 1959. He moved to Austin in 1959 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 1962. He joined the faculty in Austin as an Assistant Professor. He has held the Nasser I. Al-Rashid Chair in Civil Engineering since 1984. Over the years he has been a consultant on a number of major bridges including the Sunshine Skyway, T. Y. Lin Bear Creek Bridge, Illinois River Bridge, Second Severn Crossing, and the Storebaelt West Bridge in Denmark. His awards include the ASCE T. Y. Lin Award and the Croes Medal, ACI Watson and Reese Medals, and the Freyssinet Medal from International Federation of Structural Concrete. He received an honorary DSc from Marquette University in 2004. He was elected to National Academy of Engineering in 1976.

Host: Hojjat Adeli (phone: 614-292-7929)