Riveted / Bolted Plate Girders... 1

[justhumm]

I'm looking at a job involving a historical society that is requesting a riveted plate girder look for a bridge widening (vehicular load).

The simple solution is to design a welded plate girder and attach some facade elements to make it look good, but can anyone suggest some reading for the design of bolted plate girders?

Thanks.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

How about a nice 285 page, 1913 book on riveted plate girder design? See "Design of Plate Girders" by Lewis E. Moore, at this link:

https://books.google.com/books?id=8...AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=plate girder design&f=false

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[CELinOttawa]

Not to be difficult, but from my experience as a heritage engineer, it is *not* best preservation/heritage practice to have new work look old. The new work is to "complement" and "be in keeping with" the old. It is never to be difficult to distinguish new from old.

If you are in the US, look to the Secretary of the Interior's Heritage and Preservation standards. For Canada, the equivalent document is

http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/pages/standards-normes.aspx

Sorry about the little to no technical content, but your clients appear to not be practicing at the state of THEIR art.

 

[rb1957]

i agree with CEL, faking olde construction looks, well, fake. but i guess there aren't the riveters around that used to be ?

but i can remember a thread about something similar, the poster wanted to have bolts with hemi-shperical heads (to look like rivets) or to have something (a plastic cup?) clip over the bolt heads to look like a rivet head.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[CELinOttawa]

To the best of my knowledge there are no contractors left doing rivets. There were when I first graduated a dozen years ago, but this was for specific federal work where bolt replacement was considered to be a TECHNICAL problem, but died with their rivet oven (which was declared to be unsafe, unrepairable, and unloved... Scrapped in 2006, if memory serves).

Good luck:
1 - Finding rivets
2 - Dealing with OSH issues
3 - Finding anyone who knows how to be an anvilman, hammerman, cook, catcher, inspector, or engineer on such a job.
4 - Obtaing a working (or even serviceable) rivet oven.
5 - Finding asbestos free rivet baskets a d catches.
6 - Finding the required installation equipment.

Yes, I realise you're just looking for the info about this, but I'm trying to show that this is fruitless to the point of being truly wasted time.

 

[justhumm]

SlideRuleEra, thanks for the reference. I'll have to look at that.

CELinOttawa, on a personal level, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I hate facades, but I'm not the one writing the check.

If anything besides a welded plate girder, I imagine it would be a bolted plate girder constructed with tension-control bolts to give it more of a rivet-look...

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.fastenal.com/web/products/details/91432M[/url]

And, of general interest, I was talking to a steel fabricator a little while ago and he mentioned that (supposedly) Cianbro (contractor) built an actual riveted structure in Boston a few years ago, but I wasn't able to quickly find any information on it.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[SlideRuleEra]

justhumm - You are right, the early 20th century Longfellow Bridge is being rehabilitated using old methods and material, including riveting by Cianbro Fabrication and Coating Corp. Work is underway currently (but I suppose with all the snow not really right now). Here is a link to a news report:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...-challenges/2FlqRbhtWxuGGPa0OKWhCO/story.html

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