Stories from Madrid

The world’s longest bridge and the world’s tallest bridge are two separate bridges in two separate countries and are two different types of bridges. One is a suspension bridge in Japan and one is a cable-stayed bridge in France.

Suspension bridges have the longest spans of any type of bridge. The longest suspension bridge in the world is in Japan along the Kobe-Awaji route. It is called the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge and its main span spreads 6,532 feet long. The other two spans are each 3,150 feet making the bridge 12,831 feet overall. Due to its spectacular construction, it has been the longest bridge in the world since it opened in 1998. In order to withstand winds of 178 mph and earthquakes of up to 8.5 on the richter scale, the bridge had to be built with great detail to engineering. Geotechnical engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials. Basically it is any engineering concerned with construction on or in the ground. In order to build the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the engineers had to study the materials around it. They use construction material testing to learn the stability of the land which the bridge will be secured to. They study the movement of the earth and the process in which the ocean eats away at the land which it is secured to on the coast. Many calculations go into building this huge structure. The total price of the bridge cost Japan 500 billion yen. This price included every little detail from the 1737 illumination lights down to the cost of a single weld inspection.

The tallest bridge is measured by the height of their structure. The structural height of a bridge is the maximum vertical distance from the uppermost point of a bridge, such as the top of a bridge tower in a suspension bridge, down to the lowest visible point of a bridge, where its piers emerge from the surface of the ground or water. The tallest bridge in the world is the Millau Viaduct Bridge which spans the river Tarn in Millau-Creissels, France. The height of the Millau Viaduct is 1,125 feet tall.

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