Cast-iron Girder Bridges Of Belgian Industrialist
Charles Marcellis (1798–1864)
Author(s)
K. Verswijver, I. Wouters, I. Bertels & E. De Kooning
Abstract
In 1840 the Belgian industrialist Charles-Henri Marcellis (1798–1864) and his
partner V. Duval developed a cast-iron girder bridge to replace traditional arch or
suspension bridges. When 3 years later the town council of Ghent decided to
connect the new railway station with the old Saint-Peter’s quarter, two areas that
were divided by the Scheldt River, it became its first Belgian test. The 20-meter
long ‘Marcellis Bridge’ as it would soon be called, consisted of two pairs of castiron
pierced plates, each pair forming a box girder and serving as a parapet. The
trump card of this bridge was its straight line that did not impede river navigation
nor did it create a ‘mountain’ for horses and coaches crossing the bridge.
When looking closely at the development of Marcellis’ bridges in books,
plans and building permits one notices a striking resemblance between his
projects and Robert Stephenson and William Fairbairn’s successive bridge
designs in England. Both the Belgians and the English started with cast-iron
girders in the 1830s-40s, developing into more complex box and tubular bridges
in the 1840s-50s. A clear path of knowledge transfer is not yet identified, but
dating the different designs makes it clear that Marcellis was inspired by
England’s trial and error testing of this new and also momentary type of bridges.
In the second half of the 19th century these bridges would be built using wrought
iron and steel due to cast iron’s lack of tensile strength and ductility, and its risk
of fatigue.
Keywords: Belgium, bridges, cast iron, foundries, Marcellis, 19th century.
Keywords
Belgium, bridges, cast iron, foundries, Marcellis, 19th century
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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