Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid – renowned for pushing the limits of architectural design - is the woman behind the Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi.
Her special architectural design for the bridge in Abu Dhabi makes for a challenging assignment and certainly one of COWI's more unusual bridge projects. The bridge that now links the Abu Dhabi island with the mainland, including Dubai and the international airport, is shaped like a gigantic sculpture snaking between the lanes of traffic and features extreme proportions in concrete and steel.
The bridge has a total length of 842 m and includes three arches with the longest being 234 m long. The total width of the bridge is up to 67.4 m.
Not a standard bridge
"It is certainly not a standard bridge design," explains COWI project manager Henrik Andersen. "The advanced geometry of the steel arches and the solid concrete piers made it necessary to develop a highly detailed computer model of the bridge in order to determine its behaviour."
Complete independent design check COWI was hired by the Works Department in Abu Dhabi to independently check that the design of the bridge fulfils the design requirements. To this end, the bridge engineers used the Integrated Bridge Design and Analysis System (IBDAS) program developed by COWI.
Henrik Andersen says: "When it comes to bridge design, IBDAS is probably the leading software in the world – and one of the reasons why this project was awarded to us. On the computer we can build the bridge more or less as we expect it to look in reality. It is a very effective tool."
