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Bettws to Malpas Cycleway Rolling Bascule Bridge

As part of the construction of the Bettws to Malpas cycleway a small lifting bridge was required to ensure continuity of the cycleway across the canal. The bridge is only required to lift to allow maintenance vessels along the canal and for it to be manually operated. The bridge is 3.0m wide and spans 5.2m, consisting of steel beam construction and timber deck finish. A counterbalance system was used to enable the 6350kg deck to be lifted manually. The bridge takes the form of a rolling bascule, all be it with a very small rolling surface and rolling radius of the track.

Key facts

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Location

Bettws (near Newport), South Wales

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Client

Rowecord Structural Steelwork

Eadon Consulting carried out a design check of the bridge structure, and provided the design of the steelwork connections, and the curved rolling track using BS 5400 and BD 37/01.

The key challenges on this project were in providing a counter weighting system that would allow a single user to easily operate such a heavy bridge. Using a combination of our 3D Solidworks model, analysis carried out in STAAD Pro, and Mathcad hand calculations Eadon Consulting were able to provide our client with the most efficient counterbalance arrangement.