The Schwandbach Bridge is a deck-stiffened reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete

Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...

 arch bridge

Arch bridge

An arch bridge is a bridge with abutments at each end shaped as a curved arch. Arch bridges work by transferring the weight of the bridge and its loads partially into a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either side...

 near Berne

Berne

The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...

 in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, designed by Robert Maillart

Robert Maillart

Robert Maillart was a Swiss civil engineer who revolutionized the use of structural reinforced concrete with such designs as the three-hinged arch and the deck-stiffened arch for bridges, and the beamless floor slab and mushroom ceiling for industrial buildings...

 and completed in 1933.

Design

The arch is polygon

Polygon

In geometry a polygon is a flat shape consisting of straight lines that are joined to form a closed chain orcircuit.A polygon is traditionally a plane figure that is bounded by a closed path, composed of a finite sequence of straight line segments...

al rather than curved, spans

Span (architecture)

Span is the distance between two intermediate supports for a structure, e.g. a beam or a bridge.A span can be closed by a solid beam or of a rope...

 37 metres, and is only 200 mm thick. It supports the bridge deck via 160 mm thick reinforced concrete cross walls. The deck is thicker than the arch, and is stiff enough to prevent the slender arch from buckling

Buckling

In science, buckling is a mathematical instability, leading to a failure mode.Theoretically, buckling is caused by a bifurcation in the solution to the equations of static equilibrium...

. The highway deck is curved in plan. The arch varies in width from 4.2 metres to 6 metres, with one edge forming a straight line between river banks, and the other following the curve of the road. This arrangement helps to resist centrifugal force

Centrifugal force

Centrifugal force can generally be any force directed outward relative to some origin. More particularly, in classical mechanics, the centrifugal force is an outward force which arises when describing the motion of objects in a rotating reference frame...

s from the traffic loads and from the curved deck's tendency to twist.

Reception

The bridge is regarded as one of Maillart's masterpieces. Unlike his previous arched Valtschielbach Bridge, it relies entirely on reinforced concrete and lacks masonry arch approaches.

In 1947 the bridge was featured with other of Maillart's works in a four-month exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, New York

The architectural historian David Billington has written:

"Integration of form here is as fully developed as in any concrete bridge ... All parts exhibit their true thicknesses, with nothing hidden for effect ... With the two mature masterpieces at Töss and Schwandbach, Maillart reached a climax in his building of deck-stiffened arch bridge."