Elizabeth Quay Bridge
Arup, structural engineers, won a WA Engineering Excellence Award in 2016 for the design of the Elizabeth Quay pedestrian bridge. The bridge spans between the western Williams Landing and the new island in the east, providing increased opportunities for people to interact with the Swan River. It is 22m high, 5m wide and suspended over the inlet with a 5.2m current mean clearance. Two 45m spans connect in the middle, with the bridge’s arches sweeping down towards the water to rest on concrete piers supported on piles socketed into the rock bed.
While cable stayed arch bridges are becoming a more common solution to bridge a gap in an elegant light weight method, the excellence award recognised innovations in the design process, using highly collaborative digital workflows to connect the artistic architectural vision with dynamic structural analysis models to optimise and rationalise the complex bridge form in a short time frame.
Reference:
Arup: Elizabeth Quay Pedestrian Bridge, accessed 12 March 2020
