Building bridges

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Seven men were killed when this Dubai bridge collapsed.

Bridges add character to a city's landscape and give it an identity. And with its frenzied rate of commissioning and completing bridges, Dubai might one day inherit the title, City of Bridges, from Pittsburgh.

Bridges frame a skyline and become focal points without which a city looks incomplete - imagine New York City without the iconic Brooklyn Bridge or Sydney minus the stunning Harbour Bridge.

Bridges in the UAE are veering in the same direction and once complete are poised to add character to the country's landscape and a distinct identity in the years to come.

The basic component that goes into the construction of a bridge is steel. Since bridges first began making use of steel in the 19th century, their development has been closely linked to advances in the material's properties and production methods.

In particular, the requirements of bridge building were one of the factors that drove research work to develop better steel grades through the improvement of the production process.

Falko Schröter is the marketing manager for Dillinger Hütte GTS and says that during the last decade, the new TM (thermomechanical) steel grades are being used for the construction of a number of bridges throughout the world, such as the Normandy Bridge in France, the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam and the Øresund Crossing between Sweden and Denmark.

"Compared to traditional grades, thermomechanical steel grades offer greatly improved toughness, excellent ductility which means a higher material strength for impact and seismic loading. Recent investigations based on fracture mechanics have resulted in practical tools for the selection of the grade which fits the particular design condition. Increased toughness in the new grades enables much thicker products to be safely used for bridge structures," Schröter says.

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