Vogt

=media type="youtube" key="qYAwaviSM3M" height="390" width="480"media type="youtube" key="kDvBn9UOmO8" width="425" height="350"Willy Byrne Vogt-= The Bridge I studied for my weekly challenge was the Floating Bridge in Dubai, UAE. The Floating Bridge is located between two popular Dubai country clubs, and spans across the Creek of Dubai. Although there are two tunnels and another bridge going across the creek, they were not enough to handle the ever increasing population of Dubai which is a completely man-made city. The floating bridge is a pontoon bridge, which is usually a bridge held up by temporary floating devices to hod it up. However, the Floating Bridge in Dubai is the only pontoon bridge to include concrete. Since Dubai is in a Desert, the Creek of Dubai is not very deep. It is because of this shallowness that allows the Dubai Floating Bridge to not use an arch. In total, the cost of the Dubai Floating Bride was 185,5 million Dirham, or 22 million U.S. dollars. The materials used to build the bridge that I studied were concrete for the road and 23,000 meters of polystyrene blocks encased in concrete and the covered in polyurea. The main problem that the builder of the bridge,Clement Systems needed to get around was building a bridge that was eco-friendly and withstand the small waves and salt-water in Dubai Creek. They could have used all cement, the most stable option, but it would be terrible for the environment. The builder thought about using encasements of air like most floating bridges, but thought they wouldn't be able to sustain in Dubai creek. They ended up using polystyrene blocks encased in cement. Construction of the floating ridge started on May 30, 2006, and the bridge was made open to the public on July 16th, 2007.The Floating Bridge is 300 meters long and 22 meters wide per lane, which there are four of, two on each side. The bridge is 3.6 meters high. A fact that I found interesting was that the Dubai Floating Bridge is the only pontoon bridge in the Persian Gulf. Also, the bridge was at first only considered a temporary solution to traffic, but has been so successful that it is now being considered as a permanent solution.