Changing the face of Charleston:
Building of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge
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Oct 17, 2007 - ? (Permanent Exhibit)
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Highlights
As seen from the Aquarium
East Bay on ramp
The Last Shark Fin
Closing the main span gap
Paving the bridge
The last stay cable
Opening Events
Engineering Challenges
Stories of Bridge Folks
Erecting Steel
Building Bridge Blog

July 7, 2005: Painting fished and a fresh view of the stay cables

Shark fin anchors and supports

A closer view of the cable anchorage

Looking from the walkway

Looking down (left) and up (right)

An array of anchors and external dampers

Another view of the external damper and horizontal struts

The damper and damper frame

A view of the damper

An array of stay pipes

June 15, 2005: Last details of the stay cable systems

The bridge project has brought me more new friends than I can count. Olivier Forget, the manager of the Freyssinet team, opened his head for me and fed me ideas and insights about the complexities of erecting the stay pipes and building the cables. Soon Olivier will return to France and he would like to follow the finish work and share images of the finished external supports and shark fins with his team in France and his team members, wherever they are around the world. So this page if for Olivier and his team.

Here are the cables that Freyssinet designed, engineered, installed, tested and then, with great pride, smiled.

A bit closer

Looking east and looking west into an approaching storm

The elegance of symmetry

and asymmetry

Stay pipe shadows

A digital sketch of stay pipe shadows

Without words

Finishing touches

An array of stay cables

Supports

External Support Bases

External Dampers

Lateral supports between the external damper frame and the shark fin

External damper base

Bases for the shorter cable anchors

A view of our new bridge and approaches that we can smile about.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Attribution: C. Frank Starmer from http://ravenelbridge.net

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