A small river runs adjacent to a city. To expand its business opportunities, the city wants to extend a street across that river. The senior engineer on the project thinks a tied arch will be the best...

A small river runs adjacent to a city. To expand its business opportunities, the city wants to extend a street across that river. The senior engineer on the project thinks a tied arch will be the best structural system. To help confirm that choice, our team is going to perform an approximate analysis of the arch subjected to the largest load types to accommodate a turn lane at one end of the bridge, the bridge will taper in width. Because of the taper, the dead load on the arch is nonuniform. A team member has estimated the dead load on one side of the bridge.

a. Guess which of the following will have the largest magnitude and which will have the smallest: left vertical reaction, right vertical reaction, tie force.

b. Calculate the vertical reactions due to the dead load.

c. Approximate the arch as a three-hinge arch. Calculate the resulting tie force. d. Comment on why your guess in part (a) was or was not the same as what you discovered in parts (b) and (c).