About Ney & Partners
Ney & Partners is a structural engineering consulting company established in Brussels.
Since its foundation in 1997 the office has worked with an active view on the art of engineering through the integration of the different civil works disciplines.
This integration and optimization of structural elements aims to overcome the classic hierarchic assembly of constructive solutions.
Innovative bridges, roof structures and works of art developed by the office express most clearly this vision.
From the very beginning of the design process, Ney & Partners conducts a constant research on advanced engineering integration. In doing so, its position as Engineering Consultancy overcomes the standardized dimensioning of predefined technical solutions. Ney & Partners currently employs more than 45 civil engineers, architects, draughtsmen, etc...
About the project
The project of A.M.O.R.A.S (from "Antwerpse Mechanische Ontwatering, Recyclage en Applicatie van Slib" which means "Antwerp company of mechanical drainage, recycling and application of silt") consists of the installation of a silt treatment system. The silt is dredged from the Antwerp port and basins and processed in a dewatering facility. The dried residues contained in the filters are stored and will be recycled as a construction material. The site is located along the A12 highway in the industrial area north of Antwerp.
The dredging bridge represents a 173.5 m span steel structure. The design of Ney & Partners is a bowstring bridge with two inclined arches connected by horizontal steel plates. Bowstring bridges are the most cost-effective structures for such a span and, therefore, there was no difficulty to convince the client to abandon their first design which consisted of a heavy truss-beam of constant height without any added architectural value.
Use of Scia Engineer
Scia Engineer has been used for a full 3D model of the "bridge". The 3D model is made of beam elements. The bridge deck is quite flexible and therefore, when the pumps are moving along the bridge, cable decompression can occur. For this reason, the entire structure has been checked with the function "tension only" non-linearity. Moreover, the arches are very slender. The buckling verification was performed using the internal forces calculated using the second order analysis starting from the appropriate buckling shape obtained from the stability calculation. |