Greg Pringle

ID: 4115969

Dr Martin Smith

Case Study on the design of a historical Civil

Engineering project
This essay will discuss the design of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It first of all
considers why it was built, by whom and where the funding came from, before
moving on to detail the inspiring design of the bridge. Finally it examines the
controversy over who the credit for the design should actually be given to. The
key authors used to support my writing are Derrick Beckett and RFD Porter Goff.
In 1754 a wealthy Bristol wine merchant left 1,000 in his will with instructions
that the money should be invested until it reached 10,000, an amount he felt
would pay for the construction of a stone bridge across the Avon Gorge (Barlow,
1867). A bridge committee was set up in 1829 to make this happen; however,
their initial research indicated that a stone bridge would cost in excess of
90,000, so they successfully pushed for an Act of Parliament to change the
investors bequest to provide for an iron suspension bridge. This was a
revolutionary decision, as it had always been perceived that a suspension bridge
could not be a solution over such a wide gorge; the decision is likely to have
been inspired by the recent completion of the innovative Menai Suspension
Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford. This idea fits in with the committees next
decision, to run a competition for a bridge design with Telford as the head judge.
Over twenty entries were submitted, including four from Isambard Kingdom
Brunel, a young engineer who, at only 24 years old, had just been elected a
Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society in recognition of his work on the Thames Tunnel (Vaughan, 2006).
Controversially, though, Telford rejected all of the designs on the basis that a
single span suspension bridge could not work over such a distance; Beckett
(1980) found that Telford instead submitted his own design, which the committee
accepted. However, the design, involving two tall gothic towers being built right
up from the bottom of the gorge to create a three-span bridge, was rejected by
public opinion on aesthetic grounds. Another competition was run the year after
with a new judge, Davies Gilbert, without doubt the best qualified person in
Britain to make a technical assessment of the design of long span suspension
bridges (Beckett, 1980:101) after gaining extensive experience in this field,
including advising Telford on the construction of the Menai Bridge. Porter Goff
(1975) reports that Brunel again submitted four designs (two which were
different to his prior entries), and Gilbert, after seeking further explanation of one
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Dr Martin Smith

of Brunels designs from Isambard himself, judged Brunels design, with certain
mutually agreed modifications, superior to all others. Brunel was officially
appointed as the Engineer in 1831.
Unfortunately for Brunel, there were many problems with the funding of the
project - not least the rioting in Bristol which caused business confidence in the
city to fall, meaning the project was halted until 1836. Financial and contractual
difficulties continued, and construction beyond the towers had not commenced
when Brunel died in 1859. It was after this that one of Brunels other projects,
the Hungerford Suspension Bridge, was to be replaced by a girder bridge; the
opportunity therefore arose to salvage the chains from this bridge for use at
Clifton (Barlow, 1867). The Institute of Civil Engineers funded the project, and
employed William Barlow and Sir John Hawkshaw to complete it in 1864 as a
memorial to Brunel.
Following the knock back of the first competition and several developments as a
result of the second, Brunels bridge design was almost continuously modified.
One of the design rules set out in the competition guidelines was that suspension
chains are required to carry, as Brunel put it, the greatest possible load that can
come upon the bridge... besides the weight of the floor and of the chain itself
(Porter Goff, 1975:312), referring to the dead load combined with the dynamic
load from the wind and the passage of pedestrians and vehicles. The other
design rules set by Gilbert were that the bridge should have a safe tensile stress
in the chains of 5.5T/in2 (Beckett, 1980:101), and hold a uniform weight of
84lbf/sq.ft.; Brunels winning design had a strength of 100lbf/sq.ft. (Porter Goff,
1975:312). Despite Telford being the head judge of the competition, Beckett
(1980) suggests that in his design Brunel appears to have formed his chain
layout from a critical appraisal of Telfords Menai Bridge design. At Menai there
were four lines of chains, meaning that at each transverse beam there would
almost definitely not be an even distribution of weight to each of the four
hanging rod connections, hence Brunel used only two lines of chains to ensure
the weight would be evenly distributed between them. Also, in the wind the
chains on the Menai Bridge were observed to swing across over the deck, raising
the deck below and instigating a wave motion. Brunel therefore brought the
chains down to deck level at mid-span, meaning the cross girders prevent
transverse chain movement and so solve the issue. Each of the chain lines at
Menai contained four individual chains, a feature that Brunel perceived as
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unnecessary; he originally elected to use only one chain for each of the two
chain lines, but soon changed this to two. It is unknown whether this proposal
would have worked, however, as after Brunels death this design was found to
induce bending in the upper chains, so three chains were used in each chain line
along with different connections to the hanging rods (which would distribute the
load evenly through all of the chains) (Porter Goff, 1975). At the ends of the
bridge, fixed saddles deflect the chains into 60ft long tunnels, inside which the
three chains in each line diverge at different angles and are fixed securely by
wrought iron anchor plates. Brunel acknowledged that the initial bedding-in and
wear of the chains, along with the effects of temperature changes, would cause
fluctuations in chain length. Beckett (1980) recorded that to allow for this, Brunel
fitted tower saddles for the chains to move over, and built the towers high
enough to allow for a 60cm fluctuation of deck height at mid-span. Another
design component demonstrating the innovative brilliance of Brunel was
unearthed in 2002; twelve huge hollow chambers were discovered inside the
sandstone abutment, which had always been assumed to be solid, on the
Somerset side of the bridge (Prudames, 2002). This would have reduced costs
without compromising structural strength.
It is widely accepted that the Clifton Suspension Bridge was Isambard Brunels
work, with a plaque on the structure itself indicating that it was his design;
however, several sources are now questioning how much credit he actually
deserves. Sir Marc Brunel, Isambards father, was a highly respected engineer,
and had previously constructed two suspension bridges for the French
government (the Mat River Bridge and St Suzanne River Bridge), giving him
broad knowledge in this field. Isambard was known to be in regular contact with
his father, especially after their joint effort in designing and constructing the
Thames Tunnel, and it is logical to suggest that Isambard would have requested
advice from him. Vaughan (2006: 13) tells us Marc Brunel's diary shows that he
had put a great deal of work into the design when Isambard was travelling
around the country on other jobs and goes as far as to say Marc's very
considerable assistance in designing the Clifton bridge enabled Isambard to be
appointed its Engineer (2006: 14). On the other hand, several of Isambards
documents were recently sold at auction, including a design sketch of the bridge
that Sir Marc allegedly sent to Isambard. The design involves a 300ft Chinese
pagoda tower in the middle of the span. Anon (2010) wrote that despite this,
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24-year-old Brunel ignored his father's advice and within two years had redesigned the bridge to make it entirely unsupported, suggesting that it is not
his fathers work and Isambard deserves the full credit. Nevertheless, one of
Vaughans more recent works (2010) uses information found from analysing
Isambards diaries and letters to conclude that actually the final design,
employed after Isambards death, was so different to the original design
submission that it was closer to being a new design than to simply being a few
modifications. According to Copping (2011), William Barlow and Sir John
Hawkshaw were largely responsible for the changes and adaptations, including
adding the extra suspension chain to each chain line (as previously mentioned),
and adding a third more hanging rods. It is suggested in the BBC documentary
Men of Iron that these changes were due to a lack of trust in Brunels
calculations. On the other hand, one could argue that these alterations were only
made to accommodate the chains from the Hungerford Bridge.
In conclusion, the exact version of events for the conception, design and
construction phases of the Clifton Suspension Bridge remains unclear; each one
illustrates the innovative brilliance demonstrated by Brunel on the project,
though perhaps to varying extents. Either way, the bridge is a revolutionary
masterpiece that greatly progressed the engineering expertise of the time, and
remains an iconic landmark of Bristol.
Word count: 1539 words(including title; 1528 without)

Bibliography

ANON. Mail Online. 17 December 2010 [viewed 20/11/2011]. Available from

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339399/Suspend-disbelief-Clifton-Bridgeheld-pagoda-Brunel-listened-father.html.
Barlow, W.H. (1867). Description of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Minutes of the
Proceedings, 26, 243-257. Available from
http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/article/10.1680/imotp.1867.23161.
BECKETT, Derrick. Brunel's Britain. David & Charles, 1980.
COPPING, Jasper. The Telegraph. 16 Jan 2011 [viewed 20/11/2011]. Available from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8261682/Isambard-Kingdom-Brunel-didnot-design-Clifton-Suspension-Bridge-says-historian.html.
Men of Iron. BBC TV, 13 June 2011.
Porter Goff, R.F.D. (1975). Brunel and the Design of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
ICE Proceedings, 56, 303-321. Available from
http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/article/10.1680/iicep.1974.4007.
PRUDAMES, David. Culture 24. 06 November 2002 [viewed 20/11/2011]. Available
from http://www.culture24.org.uk/places+to+go/south+west/bristol/art14076.

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VAUGHAN, Adrian. Brunel an Engineering Biography. Ian Allen publishing, 2006.

VAUGHAN, Adrian. The Intemperate Engineer: Isambard Kingdom Brunel in His
Own Words. Ian Allen publishing, 2010.

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